GHOSTLIGHT RECORDS has announced that Jason Robert Brown’s landmark musical Songs for a New World: New York City Center 2018 Encores! Off-Center Cast Recording is available for pre-order today, Friday, December 14. The album will be released in streaming and digital formats, and a two-CD set on Friday, January 25, 2019. This is the show’s first recording since the world premiere album over 20 years ago. In the ensuing years, these songs have become staples of contemporary musical theater, including the modern standard “Stars and the Moon.” The CD package includes a 16-page booklet with production photos and a note from Jason Robert Brown. Customers who pre-order the digital album will immediately receive a download of the first single, “Surabaya-Santa.” To pre-order the album, please visit: ghostlightrecords.lnk.to/songsforanewworld
The album is based on New York City Center’s Encores! Off-Center production last summer, helmed by Kate Whoriskey, director of the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony-nominated Sweat. It featured choreography by Rennie Harris and music direction by Tom Murray. The show starred Shoshana Bean, Colin Donnell, Mykal Kilgore, and Solea Pfeiffer. The album is produced by Jeffrey Lesser and Jason Robert Brown, with Stacey Mindich and Kurt Deutsch serving as executive producers.
The debut musical from three-time Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Bridges of Madison County), Songs for a New World (1995) is a collection of powerful songs examining life, love, and the choices ordinary people make when faced with extraordinary moments. From the deck of a 1492 Spanish sailing ship to the ledge of a Fifth Avenue high-rise, each character faces the new world which follows the unique challenge they encounter.
Songs for a New World was presented at City Center from June 27-30, 2018 and was hailed as “buoyant, restorative, and immensely winning” by The New York Times and “rapturous, beautiful, and awesome” by New York Stage Review. AM New York raved that it was “unexpectedly thrilling” and praised the cast’s “powerhouse vocals coupled with great acting choices.”
Brown is also represented on Ghostlight Records with his new solo album How We React and How We Recover and his debut solo album, Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes, in addition to The Last Five Years (2002 Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording, 2013 Revival Off-Broadway Cast Recording, and 2015 Motion Picture Soundtrack), 13: The Musical (Original Broadway Cast Album, Original West End Cast Recording) and The Bridges of Madison County (Original Broadway Cast Recording).
JASON ROBERT BROWN is a composer, lyricist, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, director and performer best known for his dazzling scores to several of the most renowned musicals of his generation. The New York Times refers to Jason as “a leading member of a new generation of composers who embody high hopes for the American musical.” Jason’s score for The Bridges of Madison County, a musical adapted with Marsha Norman from the bestselling novel, directed by Bartlett Sher and starring Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale, received two Tony Awards (for Best Score and Orchestrations). A film version of his epochal Off-Broadway musical The Last Five Years was released in 2015, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan and directed by Richard LaGravenese. His major musicals as composer and lyricist include: 13, written with Robert Horn and Dan Elish, which began its life in Los Angeles in 2007 and opened on Broadway in 2008 (and was subsequently directed by the composer for its West End premiere in 2012); The Last Five Years, which was cited as one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best of 2001 and won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics; Parade, written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre in 1998, and subsequently won both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best New Musical, as well as garnering Jason the Tony Award for Original Score; Honeymoon in Vegas, based on Andrew Bergman’s film, which opened on Broadway in 2015 following a triumphant production at Paper Mill Playhouse; and Songs for a New World, a theatrical song cycle directed by Daisy Prince, which played Off-Broadway in 1995, and has since been seen in hundreds of productions around the world. Parade was also the subject of a major revival directed by Rob Ashford, first at London’s Donmar Warehouse and then at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Future projects include a new chamber musical created with Daisy Prince and Jonathan Marc Sherman called The Connector, an untitled new piece created with Kenneth Lin and Moisés Kaufman, and a new musical with Billy Crystal. Jason’s songs, including the cabaret standard “Stars and the Moon,” have been performed and recorded by Audra McDonald, Billy Porter, Betty Buckley, Karen Akers, Renée Fleming, Philip Quast, Jon Hendricks and many others. As a soloist or with his band The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, Jason has performed sold-out concerts around the world. www.jasonrobertbrown.com.
“SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD” — TRACK LISTING
DISC ONE
1. Opening: The New World
2. On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship, 1492
3. Just One Step
4. I’m Not Afraid of Anything
5. The River Won’t Flow
6. Transition: “A new world calls me in the darkness…”
7. Stars and the Moon
8. She Cries
9. The Steam Train
DISC TWO
1. The World Was Dancing
2. Surabaya-Santa
3. Christmas Lullaby
4. King of the World
5. I’d Give It All for You
6. Transition: “A new world promised it would teach me...”
7. The Flagmaker, 1775
8. Flying Home
9. Transition: “It’s about one moment…”
10. Hear My Song
NEW YORK CITY CENTER (Arlene Shuler, President & CEO) has played a defining role in the cultural life of the city since 1943. The landmark 75th Anniversary Season (2018 – 2019) pays tribute to this rich history and celebrates the institution’s singular role in the arts today. For 25 years, City Center’s Tony-honored Encores! series has been “an essential New York institution” (The New York Times). In 2013, City Center launched the Encores! Off-Center series, which features seminal Off-Broadway musicals filtered through the lens of today’s innovative artists. Dance has also been integral to the theater’s mission from the start and programs like the annual Fall for Dance Festival remain central to City Center’s identity. Home to a roster of renowned national and international companies including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (City Center’s Principal Dance Company) and Manhattan Theatre Club, New York City Center was Manhattan’s first performing arts center, founded by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia with the mission of making the best in music, theater, and dance accessible to all audiences. That mission continues today through robust education and community engagement programs which bring the performing arts to over 9,000 New York City students each year and the expansion of the theatrical experience to include art exhibitions, pre-show talks, and master classes that offer an up-close look at the work of the great theater and dance artists of our time. www.NYCityCenter.org
ENCORES! OFF-CENTER (Anne Kauffman, Artistic Director; Jeanine Tesori, Creative Advisor) was founded in 2013 with the mission of presenting musicals that pushed creative boundaries when they were first produced. Filtered through the lens of today’s artists, these shows are presented not as historical documents but as living, vital works that speak to audiences both new and old. The New York Times has called Encores! Off-Center “a summer theater highlight,” with past productions including Violet with Sutton Foster; tick, tick…BOOM! with Lin-Manuel Miranda; Little Shop of Horrors with Ellen Greene and Jake Gyllenhaal; The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin with Nikki M. James; and Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World.
GHOSTLIGHT RECORDS has become the leading independent force in Original Broadway Cast Recordings – building a library of over 200 records over the past 18 years, featuring some of the most successful Broadway musicals and solo albums by Broadway’s brightest stars. Founded by Grammy Award winner Kurt Deutsch, Ghostlight has won Grammy Awards for The Book of Mormon, In the Heights, and Beautiful – The Carole King Musical. Recent notable cast recordings include the 2018 Tony winner for Best Musical, The Band’s Visit, and the blockbuster viral sensation Be More Chill. Ghostlight has also released solo albums from Patti LuPone, Kelli O’Hara, Sutton Foster, Billy Porter, and more. The label continues to support the new generation of musical theatre composers and has developed extensive relationships with Jason Robert Brown, Michael John LaChiusa, and David Yazbek, as well as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pasek & Paul, Tom Kitt, Joe Iconis, and Shaina Taub. Ghostlight Records is part of the Arts Music division at Warner Music Group.
