Music
The Liz Swados Project Takes Music in an Interesting New Direction
The Liz Swados Project has been released on CD in stores and online. The album was released on digital and streaming formats earlier this year. The CD booklet features Liz’s personal illustrations, archival photos, selected lyrics, and special reminiscences from colleagues and friends. Hailed as “a stunning new anthology album” by American Theatre Magazine, The Liz Swados Project – a newly-recorded tribute to the visionary artist – features an epic family of performers, composers and lyricists, who have been influenced and inspired by Swados as a performer, composer, lyricist, teacher, and trailblazer.
The all-star cast of luminaries from Broadway, downtown and beyond, including vocalists Starr Busby, Sophia Anne Caruso,Damon Daunno, Amber Gray, Stephanie Hsu, Jo Lampert, Alicia Olatuja, Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Grace McLean, and Ali Stroker, in addition to songwriter/performers The Bengsons, Heather Christian, Michael R. Jackson, Taylor Mac, Dave Malloy, Shaina Taub, and the late Michael Friedman, among others. The album – featuring the world premiere recordings of 14 songs – is produced by Lauren Fitzgerald, Kris Kukul and Matt Stine, with Kurt Deutsch and Roz Lichter serving as executive producers. Kris Kukul, Ms. Swados’s longtime music director, provides orchestrations and arrangements. Preston Martin serves as choir manager. To stream or download the album, or order the CD, visit ghostlightrecords.lnk.to/lizswadosproject.
A moving music video for the song “We Are Not Strangers,” with a timely message for the nation, is performed by Heather Christian and features several of the album’s performers participating from home.
Works are featured from her landmark Broadway hit Runaways (1978), about the lives of children who run away from home and live on city streets, including a performance by Sophia Anne Caruso, who appeared in the show at New York City Center’s Encores! Off-Center series in 2016. Selections also come from Swados’ little-known masterpiece The Beautiful Lady (1984), a deeply felt meditation on the triumph and catastrophe of the Russian avant-garde; Alice in Concert, her 1981 Public Theater production which updates Alice in Wonderland, originally featuring Meryl Streep and Debbie Allen; Nightclub Cantata, the revue which became a downtown sensation in 1977, and other pieces throughout the decades. Swados herself is represented on the album, performing her composition “Bird Lament,” echoing the natural world with guitar and colorful vocal sounds. Her work was featured on a 2017 concert evening for Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series; Michael Friedman’s live performance of “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved” from that special show provides the fitting closing track for the album.
Swados, praised by The New York Times for her “unique style of socially engaged musical theater,” introduced new forms to the mainstream – world, folk, rap and experimental music – and wrote of topics not usually seen in musical theater: racism, murder and mental illness. She defied “downtown” categorization, with her work performed at La MaMa ETC, The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall and Broadway, as well as cabarets, rock clubs, churches and synagogues around the U.S. and Europe. Swados is one of the few people to have been nominated for four Tony Awards in one season, for Best Direction, Score, Book, and Choreography. As Hilton Als wrote in her obituary in The New Yorker, “(Swados) was born talented and she stayed talented, her eyes always wide with the expectation that something amazing was about to happen—and if it didn’t, she’d make it herself.”
“I just remember Elizabeth as a person with an inexhaustible creative energy. The voice that emerged – unique, female, eternally young and tied to childhood – has not been duplicated in the theater.” – Meryl Streep
“THE LIZ SWADOS PROJECT” TRACK LIST
Music and lyrics by Elizabeth Swados, unless noted
1. “We Are Not Strangers” – Heather Christian (from Runaways, 1978)
2. “Every Now and Then” – Dave Malloy (from Runaways, 1978)
3. “Oh, King Daddy” – Amber Gray (from The Concert at the Bottom Line, 1978)
4. “The Red Queen” – Taylor Mac (from Alice in Concert, 1980 – adapted from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)
5. “In This My Green World” – Stephanie Hsu, with Preston Martin (from Alice in Concert, 1980 – music by Elizabeth Swados, lyrics by Kenneth Patchen from his poem)
6. “Take Me to Paris” – Ali Stroker (from The Beautiful Lady, 1984 – based on Russian poems translated by Paul Schmidt)
7. “Souf” – Jo Lampert (from Nomad, 2015 – music by Elizabeth Swados, lyrics by Erin Courtney)
8. “You Gave Me Love” – Alicia Olatuja (from Lullaby and Goodnight, 1982)
9. “You Do Not Have To Be Good” – Shaina Taub (from Atonement, 2007 – music by Elizabeth Swados, lyrics by Mary Oliver)
10. “Song of the Child Prostitute” – Sophia Anne Caruso (from Runaways, 1978)
11. “The Dance” – The Bengsons (from Nightclub Cantata, 1977)
12. “Salvador” – Ashley Pérez Flanagan, with Rachael Duddy and Hannah Whitney (from Missionaries, 1997)
13. “Isadora” – Damon Daunno (from The Beautiful Lady, 1984 – based on Russian poems translated by Paul Schmidt)
14. “Lonesome of the Road” – Michael R. Jackson (from Runaways, 1978)
15. “War Gets Old” – Grace McLean (from Dispatches, 1979 – music by Elizabeth Swados, lyrics by Michael Herr)
16. “A Change Shall Come” – Starr Busby (from The Beautiful Lady, 1984 – based on Russian poems translated by Paul Schmidt)
17. “Bird Lament” – Elizabeth Swados
18. “Amen” – Choir (from The Haggadah: A Passover Cantata, 1980)
19. “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved” – Michael Friedman, with Rachael Duddy and Dara Orland (from Nightclub Cantata, 1977 – music by Elizabeth Swados, lyrics by Nazim Hikmet; recorded as part of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s The Appel Room)
G.H. Harding
RYAN O’NEAL — For people of a certain age, Ryan O’Nea’sl portrayal of Harvard-preppy Oliver Barreett IV in 1970’s Love Story – who falls for working-class Radcliffe student Jennifer Cavilleri, was emblazoned forever in their minds. O’Neal passed Friday at 82 and left behind a rather tremendous body of work, from Peyton Place on TV, to Love Story; Paper Moon; Barry Lyndon; The Thief Who Came To Dinner; People I Know (with Al Pacino), The Driver; Irreconcilable Differences; Chances Are (with Robert Downey, Jr.) and What’s Up Doc with Barbra Streisand, on the silver screen. His output was somewhat jiggered. but boy, in each of his roles he showed a storied conviction. When I think about his roles right now, everyone reverberated with me. If you don’t believe me, watch Barry Lyndon again! Just superb!
His off-camera role was that of a wild hellion, perhaps most noted by his wooing and subsequent marriage to Farrah Fawcett, then riding her one-season arc on TV’s Charlie’s Angels. Together they had a son Redmond, who endured through his own personal tragedy.
Along with Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Kurt Russell, and Burt Reynolds … O’Neal led the pack of leading men in the 70’s. I will miss him for sure. here’s a great tribute in the U.K.’s Guardian:https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/08/ryan-oneal-actor-tribute-love-story-paper-moon
Steve Hackett
HACKETT’S CIRCUS — (Via Prog) Steve Hackett has shared the first new music from his upcoming studio album, The Circus And The Nightwhale, which will be released through InsideOutMusic on February 16. Watch the new video for People Of The Smoke below.
“My new album kicks off with People Of The Smoke, where we’re thrown back in time to the smokescape of 1950 London,” Hackett tells Prog. “A baby’s scream becomes a steam train, black smoke invades everything and industry rules the day. This is the place where the album’s story begins…”
The Circus And The Nightwhale will be the first full-blown Hackett concept album since his 1975 solo debut Voyage Of The Acolyte, which followed Genesis’s 1974 grand double concept affair The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.
“The Circus And The Nightwhale is an album with a difference,” Hackett adds. “This time it is a story, based both literally and metaphorically on my life… It’s both faction and fiction, beginning in a gritty world of harsh reality, spinning off into a colourful and dark, weird metaphorical universe of wonder turned to terror, with an ultimately beautiful resolve.”
The album features Hackett’s touring band as well as a raft of guests including Amanda Lehmann and Big Big Train’s Nick D’Virgilio, Hugo Degenhardt return as guests on the drumstool, Benedict Fenner features on keyboards and Malik Mansurov on tar, with Hackett’s brother John once more on flute.
The Circus And The Nightwhale will be available on several different formats, including a limited edition CD and Blu-ray mediabook (including 5.1 Surround Sound and 24-bit high resolution stereo mixes), standard CD jewelcase, gatefold 180g vinyl LP and as digital album.
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_iujNWzPL0
Micky Dolenz and Nikki Novak at KTLA
SHORT TAKES — Micky Dolenz on KTLA’s Countdown To 2024New Year’s Eve interviewed by Nikki Novak. Here’s Micky and Nikki. Thanks, Kimberly Cornell, for the photo. Speaking of Dolenz, his “Shiny Happy People” recording remains for a fourth week on the UK’s Official Physical Singles Chart, right behind Coldplay’s Xmas single.
Brad LeBeau
Congrats… Brad LeBeau’s forthcoming Teardrops On The Dancefloor doc will include interviews with David Morales; Hex Hector; Maurice Joshua; Dave Aude; David Morales and Nicky Siano … all classic DJ’s … Kevin Costner and Jewel dating? Seems an odd pairing, but that’s why they do call it Hollyweird! … Great article from Ultimate Classic Rock on the much-missed Denny Laine: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/denny-laine-songs/?fbclid=IwAR0FJFlY5IIHcC6wwStnVQV5Azk2aV_FW2laG0do5E08bBb6aTDlWJ-9V1E … Big news coming from Yorkshire Publishing; currently riding high on the charts with Mark Bego’s Joe Cocker tome …
Mark Maron
And: I’m not a huge Mark Maron fan, even though a colleague has been after me for years to listen to him
Lou Adler
so I jumped in this week and listened to a podcast with Lou Adler. Lou Adler: Johnny Rivers; Sam Cooke; Monterey Pip; The Roxy; Carole King; ODE Records …a true legend. Maron was good, but seemed somewhat confused when he discussed Monterey and Herb … Alpert that it. Here’s it is: https://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-1484-lou-adler
NAMES IN THE NEWS — Sam Rubin; Alison Martino; Tobe Becker; Robert Funaro; Milicient Mifficiendo; Steve Walter; Richard Johnson; Jacqueline Boyd; Peter Abraham; Adrian Niles; Jeremy Long; Joel Diamond; Les Schwartz; Tom & Lisa Cuddy; Robert Funaro; Anthony Noto; Adam White; John Weber; Randy Alexander; Jeremy Long; and CHIP!
15 days to go! Every year people panic to find the perfect gift. We at T2C have been collecting idea’s all year long to bring you the perfect gift guide at all price levels. When you’re at the end of your rope trying to find the perfect Christmas present this year, come to this guide for some great suggestions.
I am always excited to discover a new exciting musical score. Concord Theatricals Recordings has just released a studio cast recording by award-winning composer/lyricist Carmel Dean called Well-Behaved Women.
I fell in love with Dean’s music in 2018, when she made her compositional debut with Renascence, produced by The Transport Company, which I also recommend putting on your theatre and music lovers list. This show won the Off- Broadway Alliance Award for best new musical. At the time Dean was 19
Well-Behaved Women Album Sizzle. View HERE.
This new album features Tony Award®-winning artists and Broadway stars, including Sasha Allen, Laura Benanti, Andréa Burns, Liz Callaway, Jenn Colella, Hannah Corneau, Melissa Rose Hirsch, Dee Hoty, Judy Kaye, LaChanze, Lindsay Mendez, Bonnie Milligan, Lauren Patten, and Pearl Sun, among others.
I am obsessed with “Ladies Of The Press,” featuring Jenn Colella. View HERE.
“Stay And Fight,” featuring Sasha Allen. View HERE.
“We Rise,” featuring the full ensemble. View HERE
This song cycle celebrating historic women who fought to make their voices heard. This powerful album is now available on streaming and digital platforms worldwide. Stream or download the album HERE.]
17 days to go! Every year people panic to find the perfect gift. We at T2C have been collecting idea’s all year long to bring you the perfect gift guide at all price levels. When you’re at the end of your rope trying to find the perfect Christmas present this year, come to this guide for some great suggestions.
How unique is this Spiral Song Lyric with Night Sky Map Clock.
Looking for a way to capture a meaningful day and text in one beautiful design? Grab a Personalized Star Map for you on a clock. Have questions about this design or how to personalize it for you or a gift? Message, as customer happiness is their #1 goal.
You give the company The Artist, Song Title or enter lyrics, a quote, names, address (for night sky) and the date and a spiral print will be printed showing the star map, alignment of the stars and constellations from your special day. Personally I think it is an amazing gift at $53.97 .
Free proofs are provided as well as quick edits to make sure you love your design before it’s printed.
To personalize your night sky spiral print, click here.
“Light One Candle” is a song by the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary. This popular Chanukah song was performed in concerts starting in 1982 at Carnegie Hall, before recording it for their 1986 studio album No Easy Walk to Freedom.
At The Carney’s concert in 2019 I was introduced to this song. Reeve as a young child was part of the children’s choir to sing back up at Carnegie Hall.
I feel in love with the lyric and sentiment so from T2C to you we wish you a happy Hanukkah
G.H. Harding
TREE LIKE ME — Monday morning, gossip-sites were ablaze with this missive from one Tree Paine – Taylor Swift’s publicist – about swirling rumors about the singer’s love life: Travis Kelce’s sister-in-law, Kylie Kelce, subtly supported Taylor Swift after the “Anti-Hero” singer’s publicist clapped back at rumors about her love life. Eagled-eyed fans noticed that Kylie “liked” a post from the Today Show about Tree Paine slamming celebrity gossip blog DeuxMoi for spreading “fabricated lies” about Swift’s relationship with ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn.
Ms. Paine’s PR-firm is called Premium PR and by all accounts, the Nashville-based mistress has had a great ride with Swift. As we go to press, Time Magazine just named her their person of the year.
Back in the day, ZZ Top and Michael Jackson had Howard Bloom; Debbie Gibson and Run DMC had David Salidor; Elton and the Rolling Stones have Fran Curtis; and Billy and Alexa Joel and Christie Brinkley have Claire Mecuri … all stars in our book, but Ms. Paine has Swift.
Brenda Lee
BRENDA LEE — (from People) Brenda Lee has a reason to celebrate the holidays early this year.
On Monday, the singer’s 1958 classic “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time, 65 years following its debut.
In claiming the top spot, Lee broke many records — including those held by Mariah Carey and her mega hit “All I Want for Christmas is You” — as her hit became the third holiday No. 1 ever to be featured on the Hot 100, per a press release.
This marks Lee’s third No. 1 hit in her career. She earned her first No. 1 with her 1960 single “I’m Sorry.”
Lee was just 13 years old when she recorded the Johnny Marks-penned hit debut, and at 78, she’s now the oldest woman to top the Hot 100, surpassing previous record-holders Cher for “Believe” when she was 52 and Carey for “All I Want for Christmas Is You” at 53.
In a press release statement, Lee called the song’s latest achievement “amazing. “I cannot believe that ‘Rockin’’ has hit No. 1 65 years after it was released, this is just so special!” she said. “Thank you to the team at UMG/UMe who worked so hard to celebrate the song’s anniversary this year. But most importantly, thank you to the fans who keep listening.”
Lee continued: “The song came out when I was a young teenager and now to know that it has resonated with multiple generations and continues to resonate — it is one of the best gifts I have ever received. Keep on Rockin’ and Merry Christmas!”
Last month, Lee released the first-ever music video for her Christmas classic, which features cameos from Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood. Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFsZy9t-qDc
In addition to the music video, she shared the EP, A Rockin’ Christmas with Brenda Lee, in November featuring “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and other holiday favorites including “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” “Jingle Bell Rock” “A Marshmallow World” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” reimagined by Filous.
For record aficionados: The song was originally released on Decca Records in 1958. Dub Allbritten became Lee’s personal manager in 1956 and remained in that position throughout her formative years. In May 1956, Lee signed with Decca and two months later had her first recording session, supervised by Paul Cohen with the assistance of Owen Bradley
SHORT TAKES — RIP Denny Laine – best remembered from The Moody Blues (“Go Now”) and Paul McCartney’s Wings – and their best album Band On The Run. I loved “Go Now” btw. Here’s Roger Friedman’s take via SHOWBIZ 411: https://www.showbiz411.com/2023/12/05/rip-denny-laine-79-original-member-of-wings-and-the-moody-blues-wrote-the-hit-go-now …
Denny Laine; Linda and Paul McCartney
I didn’t see any reviews from Debbie Gibson’s 2 shows last week at NYC’s Gramercy Theater but Yahoo did run a headline that she had 5 costume changes! They were in support of her 2022 holiday Winterlicious album …The Kennedy Center Honors had their event this past weekend. Congrats all. Can’t wait to see the show next week. Here’s Deadline’s take: https://deadline.com/2023/12/kennedy-center-honors-joe-biden-robert-de-niro-billy-crystal-1235650306/ …
Debbie Gibson (by Troy Smith)
Here’s celebrity-biographer Mark Bego’s interview with NEWHD’s Zach Martin: https://www.spreaker.com/user/bigfatamerican/mark-bego-copy … RIP Norman Lear; Happy Bday Anthony Noto … On the mend: Jerry Lembo!
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