FOUR CAST ALBUM GURUS HAVE THEIR SAY By Peter Filichia
“Give cast albums as gifts!” So said Lawrence Maslon when moderating a paneldiscussion a few weeks ago at the NYU Skirball Center. So ifyou observe Christmas and still haven’t found anything foryour friends and relatives, do take the New York Universityprofessor’s advice. Nodding in agreement to Maslon’s directive were his threepanelists: Theodore S. Chapin (CCO of […]
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR RETURNS TO ITS ROOTS By Peter Filichia
It’s said that what goes around comes around – and that’s now true of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. In early 1970, the pop opera became famous as a two-disc vinyl record album. It put composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice on the charts as well as the cultural map. Now in late 2018 – […]
THE SECRET GARDEN TELLS QUITE A STORY By Peter Filichia
I’ve heard him say it more than once. Thomas Z. Shepard, who’s won more Grammys for producing recordings than there are players on a football team, has often talked about his ideal cast album: “It’s one that makes the story so clear that you don’t even need to read the liner notes.” Perhaps the best […]
ONCE ON THIS ISLAND: A Revinylization By Peter Filichia
Back in 1990, it missed its chance by a matter of months. ONCE ON THIS ISLAND opened in October of that year. By then, original Broadway cast albums were no longer issued as long-playing records (or LPs, as they were more commonly known). The Tony-winning CITY OF ANGELS, which had released its original cast album […]
TWO BY TWO IN HAPPIER TIMES By Peter Filichia
Frankly, I’m glad that I saw it in its New Haven tryout and not in New York when it became a disgrace. Saturday night September 26, 1970 was the last performance of TWO BY TWO at New Haven’s Shubert Theatre. My house seat was next to Arthur Miller’s. He was undoubtedly there because Joan Copeland, […]
