A host of Broadway favorites will be heard on a new album from composer, lyricist, music director, pianist, and music producer Georgia Stitt, entitled Bell Tower, set to release digitally March 6 by Concord Theatricals Recordings. 

The 26 theatrical art songs are performed by Kate Baldwin (Hello, Dolly!, Big Fish), Sierra Boggess (The Little Mermaid, The Phantom of the Opera), Tituss Burgess (The Little Mermaid; Oh, Mary!), Nikki Renée Daniels (Company, Hamilton), Andrea Jones-Sojola (The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, The Music Man), Marc Kudisch (Girl From the North Country, Finding Neverland), Tony winner Ruthie Ann Miles (The King and I, Sweeney Todd), Tony winner Kelli O'Hara (The King and I, The Light in the Piazza), and two-time Grammy winner Hila Plitmann. The new recording also includes three tracks featuring Stitt and Tony nominee Rebecca Luker (Phantom of the Opera, The Sound of Music, The Secret Garden), recorded before Luker's passing in 2020.

Stitt collected poetry for these three song cycles, which stretch across three decades of her career, from sources spanning the New York City subway (Alicia Partnoy’s poem “Communication,” featured in an MTA ad campaign), poetry collections (works by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Dorothy Parker, Connie Bensley, and Wendy Cope), and archival gems (by Sara Teasdale, Margaret Funkhouser, Lorine Niedecker, and Georgia Douglas Johnson) as well as poems commissioned from friends Faye Greenberg, Angelica Chéri, Mindi Dickstein, Anika Chapin, and Ta’Rea Campbell.

The album takes its name from the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, set to music by Stitt for voice, piano, violin, and vibraphone, and here performed by soprano Plitmann.

“The challenge and the joy of setting poetry to music is in trying to figure out what a composer can offer that brings music to the poet’s work without getting in the way,” says Stitt. “I’m often thinking about how music can add pacing and allow breadth, how musical comedy requires specific timing, how rhyme can set very exacting expectations, how choices about musical density can either amplify or impede a poem’s meaning, how we hear musical text differently when we’re not also reading it…I write music that is mostly in the service of words, aiming to enhance their meaning and provide an emotional invitation to signal something about my understanding to the listener.”

Pre-save the recording here.

The complete track listing follows:

1. What Lips My Lips Have Kissed (Poem By Edna St. Vincent Millay) — Rebecca Luker
2. Hutchinson Sonnet (Poem By Henry William Hutchinson) — Rebecca Luker
3. When I Am Dead (Poem By Christina Rossetti) — Rebecca Luker
4. The Trumpet (Poem By Edward Thomas) — Tituss Burgess (with trumpet player Liesl Whitaker)
Small Talk: A Very Short Song Cycle (Part One)
5. Communication (Poem By Alicia Partnoy) — Kate Baldwin
6. Alan’s Dead (Poem By Faye Greenberg) — Kate Baldwin
7. That Look (Poem By Faye Greenberg) — Kate Baldwin
8. Why I Avoid Eye-Contact (Poem By Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz) — Kate Baldwin
9. Exterminator (Poem By Mindi Dickstein) — Kate Baldwin
10. Permissive Society (Poem By Connie Bensley) — Kate Baldwin
11. Central Park At Dusk (Poem By Sara Teasdale) — Kate Baldwin 
12. Let This Darkness Be A Bell Tower (Poem By Rainer Maria Rilke) — Hila Plitmann
13. London (Poem By William Blake) — Marc Kudisch
14. Composed Upon Westminster Bridge (Poem By William Wordsworth) — Marc Kudisch
Small Talk: A Very Short Song Cycle (Part Two)
15. Bloody Men (Poem By Wendy Cope) — Ruthie Ann Miles
16. The True Nature Of Evil (Poem By Anika Chapin) — Ruthie Ann Miles
17. From Halcyon Hall— (Poem By Margaret Funkhouser) Ruthie Ann Miles
18. A Very Short Song— (Poem By Dorothy Parker) Ruthie Ann Miles
19. The Heart Of A Woman— (Poem By Georgia Douglas Johnson) Ruthie Ann Miles
20. Brief Passage — (Poem By Sarah Ruhl) Kelli O’Hara
21. Re-Creation — (Poem By Jacqueline Suskin) Andrea Jones-Sojola
Small Talk: A Very Short Song Cycle (Part Three)
22. What Horror To Awake At Night (Poem By Lorine Niedecker) — Sierra Boggess
23. Tectonic Plates — (Poem By Angelica Chéri) Sierra Boggess
24. Masked Behavior — (Poem By Ta’rea Campbell) Sierra Boggess
25. Small Talk — (Poem By Mindi Dickstein) Sierra Boggess
26. Hold Fast Your Dreams (Poem By Louise Driscoll) — Nikki Renée Daniels