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TMTP's Blog

Vinyl Memories

7/26/2020

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Harbinger's latest album, Geraldine Fitzgerald's Streetsongs, is now available as a special collector's edition ON VINYL! Yes, that's right, TMTP is now entering the retro-hip era of the  LP record. So, with great nostalgia, the staff recalled memories of their most beloved vinyl cast recordings growing up and how listening to original LPs influenced their love of musicals today.

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"I remember sitting on the living room floor listening to this record and staring at the golden album cover in my lap. I'd try to match each character to their song based on what they looked like and how they were posed in the line. I would pick my favorites and try to dress and stand like them in front of the mirror. Imagine a 7 year-old singing 'Dance: Ten; Looks: Three' around the house!"
​- Joanna May Cullinan
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"I received this album as a gift when I was 10 or so, and fell completely in love with it. The music was hauntingly beautiful and the orchestration featured delicate jazzy arrangements. I longed to play those beautiful piano parts, so I asked for the score and started learning the music. Even now, when I hear those first few notes of the Overture, I am taken right back to that sweet time when emotions were heightened and everything seemed possible. The musical formed me in so many ways."
- Nancy Maier
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"On my 6th birthday I received BOTH the movie soundtrack and the original cast recording from my parents. I created groundbreaking choreography to 'Greased Lightning' (jogging across the room repeatedly was a defining sequence) and forced my 4-year-old brother to perform it with me. I'm sure he remembers the experience fondly."
- Heather Meeker
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"In the 1960s, when Original Cast Albums were super-popular, Columbia Records in particular often made them LAVISH. You opened up the sleeve as you would a book to find liner notes and photos on a two-sided printed sheet glued to the cover. Meredith Willson's Here's Love from 1963 may not have been his best musical (he wrote The Music Man, after all), but you'd never know it from the spectacular photo layout on the inside. I have the album on CD, of course, but I treasure the LP, which I bought at Disc Records at Severance Center with money earned from my paper route!
- Bill Rudman

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"This 2-album brown cover set was integral to my Good Friday traditions while growing up. I have very vivid memories of lying on the floor on my stomach in our family room listening  and following along closer to the lyric insert to make sure I knew every word and who was saying what. I still listen to this soundtrack during Holy Week most years and it's one of the few albums I still have from my childhood."
​- Debbie Schinker
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"I remember I saw a stage production of My Fair Lady when I was 10 years old and was obsessed with all the music. I saved my money all year and purchased the album with my own money. I listened to the songs over and over. However, one song in particular, 'Wouldn't it be Loverly' was played more than others. I was determined to be able to mimic Eliza's accent. For the next couple of years, I would sing this song every chance I could get."
- Heidi Lang

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Geraldine Fitzgerald's Emerald

7/23/2020

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By Bill Rudman

​It’s rare that something you created 37 years ago is still admired decades later. The first LP Ken
Bloom and I ever produced – Geraldine Fitzgerald in Streetsongs – was recently released on CD
on The Musical Theater Project’s Harbinger label, and though it won raves back in the day from
The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, it appears to be a hit all over again.

Actually, “created” is too strong a word. What Ken and I did in 1983 was adapt the star’s live
performance into a recording that worked on its own terms. If her name doesn’t ring a bell,
Geraldine was a great Irish-American actor: a star from the 1930s through the 1950s, sharing the
stage or screen with the likes of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles and Gary Cooper, and then
appearing or directing on Broadway until a few years before her death in 2005. As if that were
not enough, in the late 1970s she decided to become a cabaret singer, and publicizing her show at the Roundabout was my first New York job.

We became friends, and I was captivated by her voice, though it was, by her own admission,
“peculiar” and “a rough instrument” – a kind of combination of Lotte Lenya and Marlene
Dietrich. But she knew how to take you deep inside songs as disparate as Gershwin’s “Swanee,”
Tommy Makem’s “Four Green Fields” and the Beatles’ “Leaving Home.”

But the question Ken and I asked ourselves last year was this: Would anyone care about our
work (and Geraldine’s luminous art) in 2020?

The response makes us very proud. The customer “reviews” on Amazon are loaded with Five Stars – the highest rating! And several of them amount to mini-essays. I’ll quote from just one, by Arthur Fergenson: “This is theater at its recorded best, where Ms. Fitzgerald acts in the roles
crafted by her….This is about playing a role in the course of a five- to 15-minute one-act play
with music. Listen carefully to Bill Rudman’s radio interview of Ms. Fitzgerald in 1983, excerpts
of which are included on this CD, and you will understand. She wants, craves a full stage with a
large audience so that she can feed off their energy and bring her actor’s craft fully to bear.

“And she does so brilliantly. Her ‘Danny Boy’ is justifiably the most famous piece in the show.
Reminding me of Andrea Marcovicci, Ms. Fitzgerald brings a powerful intelligence to bear
explaining what the song is really about, and seamlessly enters into the song and the character
she plays as the young woman saying goodbye (and possibly farewell) to her beloved. In six
minutes, Ms. Fitzgerald wills us into knowing and feeling.”
​
Bottom line: 37 years ago Geraldine Fitzgerald created a classic recording, and all these years
later, Ken and I are tremendously proud of it. P.S. This month Amazon will also offer the album
in its original vinyl edition; what goes around, comes around.

Order now on Amazon

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    Author

    The Musical Theater Project's authors include Bill Rudman,  Heather Meeker and Joanna May Cullinan -  and guest writers from time to time!
    ​

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  • About
    • Mission
    • Leadership
    • For TMTP Members >
      • Celebrating You !
      • Curtain Call: Member Newsletter
      • Member Events
      • Tell Us Your Peter Pan Story
    • Employment Opportunities
    • Auditions
    • Volunteer
  • Concerts
    • The Song Is You! Concert Series
    • Rendezvous Cabarets
    • On-Site Cabarets
    • Lecture-Demonstrations
  • School Programs
    • Kids Love Musicals! >
      • Distance Learning >
        • Unit 1: Cinderella
        • Unit 2: Jungle Book
        • Unit 3: The Wizard of Oz
        • Unit 4: Peter Pan
        • Unit 5: Charlie Brown
      • KLM Resources
      • Teacher Preparation
    • Two-Day Residency
    • Extended Residency - Special Needs Classrooms
    • Intergenerational Workshop
    • Meet Our Teaching Artists
    • Sponsorship
  • Radio Programs
    • Footlight Parade >
      • For Program Directors
    • On the Aisle
  • Recordings
    • About Harbinger Records
    • Recent Releases
    • Harbinger Playlists
    • News & Reviews
    • Catalog by Title
    • Catalog by Artist
  • Donate
    • Become a Contributing Member
    • TMTP Annual Report
    • Legacy Giving >
      • Legacy Gift Options
      • TMTP Organizational Fund
  • Resources
    • Bill's Picks
    • Diversity and the American Musical
    • Links & Books
    • Overture Newsletter
  • TMTP Online
    • Movies At Home
    • TMTP Playlists
    • KLM's Mid-Week Musical Pick Me Up
    • TMTP's Blog
  • Store