All tagged Parade

Musical Theatre Moments: 40 Favorite YouTube Clips from Broadway Shows

I know how my readership loves to watch videos from Broadway shows. For years, I have been wending my way through YouTube, watching great clips from Tony Awards, talk shows, and the occasional bootleg that has presented itself. Today, I feel like sharing my forty FAVORITE clips from hit shows (I’ve already done the flops). Hopefully, you will enjoy this countdown to my favorite and enjoy all the “hard work” I have put- in assembling it for you. Let the streaming begin!

Broadway's Glorious Choral Sequences

Today I find myself in the mood to listen to great choral numbers from Broadway musicals. These are the glorious sequences where evocative orchestrations join hands with a multitude of voices and a synergy is born that shoots a jolt of lightening through the listener. Going through my cast recordings, picking favorites is hard to do, but I have assembled some of mine here. This list is by no means complete, nor is it intentionally exclusive. What it strives to be is a compilation of the choral numbers that make my heart soar. I hope you will weigh in, maybe listen to a few, and share some of your impressions of my choices and weigh-in on your favorites.

Back to Before - Why Everything that Came Before RENT Still Has Relevance

Last week, there was an interesting discussion and debate on the Cast Recordings Facebook page over an article titled Twelve Cast Recordings That Will Change Your Life. There was a lot of back and forth over the piece since it mostly discussed newer musicals and one film soundtrack and seemed to dismiss almost everything in the pre-Rent era. There is nothing wrong in having your life changed by newer cast recordings. Indeed, musical theatre would be a very limited genre if we established some sort of cutoff point for musicals worthy of our attentions. The piece was obviously written by someone young and enthusiastic and it's easy to see how he'd be attracted to the contemporary pieces of his lifetime. That being said, the article was titled "Cast Recordings that will Change YOUR Life", so the author makes the egregious assumption that all of us will be taken with the titles he mentions. This proved not to be so when a variety of enthusiasts weighed in and admonished the absence of many classic titles on this list.