The pickings from the Bell Telephone Hour that Video Artists International delves into must be getting slim. It isn’t that the material on latest releases in VAI’ Music’s series isn’t first rate. Indeed, there are some tasty morsels in these collections of musical segments from the ten year run of that television variety show which Donald Voorhees conducted between 1959 and 1968. [Read more...]

I may be excused for presuming that, if you have a theater shelf, it already sports a copy of Steven Suskin’s book. Equal parts reliable reference book and entertainingly written opinionated history, your shelf may have the first edition from 1985 when it instantly became indispensable as the book to check for quick information on any one of 30 of Broadway’s best composers. [Read more...]

Few scores establish their “voice” quite as rapidly as does the score for this poorly titled but highly intriguing one-act musical that had its Off-Broadway premiere in 2010. [Read more...]

Do you look for ravishing romantic beauty in your musicals? If so, Maury Yeston is probably on your list of favorite composers. Think of “Only With You” (Nine), “We’ll Meet Tomorrow” (Titanic) or “Love Can’t Happen” (Grand Hotel). If you are a regular follower of this column and took my advice last February, think of “I Will Paint Sounds” from Goya … A Life in Song. [Read more...]

Filichia has done it again

What is a reviewer to do when a book shows up for review that has a pull quote from him praising the author to high heaven? Is it a conflict of interest to praise the new volume as well?

When Peter Filichia’s newest book hit my desk I was presented with this conundrum. What to do? [Read more...]

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and Who”? Or perhaps the question should be “The Who and Who?” [Read more...]

OK – its the week after Christmas. Maybe some kind soul gave you every item that you didn’t already have from our Holiday Gift Guide – plus perhaps a gift certificate or cash. What to do? [Read more...]

Oh, my! What am I to do now? The 2011 Broadway Revival Cast recording of Follies has just come out on PS Classics and now my “desert island” list of recordings I’d want with me if I was shipwrecked has two – count ‘em, two – two-disc sets of the same score. Since the entire concept of a “desert island” list is to bring an unmanageable collection down to its essence, I guess I just have to have hope to be shipwrecked on a larger desert island! (Thank goodness for the ever increasing capacity of hard drives for computers!) [Read more...]

Stephen Sondheim’s second volume of “Collected Lyrics with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany” titled “Look, I Made a Hat” has arrived just in time for either giving as a gift during the holiday season or sitting and reading during any time off a theatre lover has in a busy holiday month. [Read more...]

The successful holiday run that the musical version of the film “Elf” had at the Hirschfeld Theatre on Broadway for Christmas 2010 was expected by many to lead to a return for the Christmas season this year and, perhaps, for years ahead. The show didn’t come back this season, but the recording of the score with its original cast is here in its stead. It may not be quite as much fun as seeing the show live – what mere audio recording can be? – but it stands on its own two green felt booted feet and delivers a good 47 minute listen. [Read more...]