Description: World Premiere Recording


Synopsis:

Featured Artist: Jessica Molaskey  Andrea Burns  Brooks Ashmanskas  

Composer: Jason Robert Brown  

Author: Director: Special Feature: Release date: 01/01/1980
Format: CD
Year of recording: 1996
Number of disc: 1
Number of pages: Classification: Running time:

More information:

Jason Robert Brown, one of musical theater`s brightest young composers, made his first New York splash in 1995 with Songs for a New World at the WPA Theatre. It`s a revue of 16 of his cabaret and theater songs, directed by Daisy Prince (Hal`s daughter) and realized by a crack cast of Andrea Burns, Jessica Molaskey, Brooks Ashmanskas, and Ty Taylor (who sang the role on this recording only because cast member Billy Porter had a contractual conflict), with Brown himself leading a small combo from the piano. Soaring melodies and irresistible rhythms mark a wide range of songs that encompass jazz ("Just One Step"), gospel ("The River Won`t Flow"), funk ("Steam Train"), and Kurt Weill ("Surabaya Santa," sort of Mrs. Claus`s lament as it would be sung by Lotte Lenya). Most memorable are two songs of lost love: the Ashmanskas-Burns duet "I`d Give It All for You," which perfectly captures romantic yearning, and Molaskey`s wry yet poignant "Stars and the Moon," which has become something of a jazzy standard, recorded by such luminaries as Audra McDonald and Betty Buckley.