Anyone who remembers the thrill they got the first time
they heard Jason Robert Brown's story-song filled revue Songs For A New
World, should rush to get this recording of John Bucchino's story-song
filled revue It's Only Life, for it offers the same thrill of
discovery and the same promise of delights to come as its author produces
more of his wonderful material. There are good reasons that this new disc
brings back memories of that earlier one. They both are collections of songs
relating contemporary life among the newer generation of urban Americans.
They both offer literate, interesting lyrics that match
melodic, rhythmically intriguing music. This new collection has been crafted
from an existing catalogue of songs by the same director, Daisy Prince, and
is performed by a cast of five that includes three who were on the recording
of Brown's Songs. |
Contents:
A musical revue of the songs of John Bucchino concentrating on contemporary
urban life. Each tells a mini-story in the first person and the personality
of the story-teller in each instance is at least as interesting as the story
he or she is telling.There are
differences between Songs for a New World and this new find, too.
It's Only Life comes from the catalogue of cabaret songwriter
John Bucchino, whose work is probably best known to musical theater fans for
his one-act musical, Lavender Girl, which was part of the evening of short
works recorded under the title 3hree (which starred Potomac Region regular,
Will Gartshore.) Compared to Brown, his world view is a bit more
idiosyncratic, he throws in more wordplay, even when it is a stretch, and his
music displays its structure more openly. It is a marvelous first full disc.
With Brooks Ashmanskas, Andrea Burns and
Jessica Molaskey delivering the same sharply enunciated, well acted song
style as they did on Brown's disc but with additional work by Gavin Creel
and Billy Porter, this is a vocal delight, and Bucchino
certainly gives them all the material they need to shine. There's even a
song or two with vocal arrangements by Brown, just to bring everything full
circle. The composer accompanies the vocalists on solo piano.
While seventeen short song transitions were recorded,
the 23 main songs took up all the space they had on the disc. In the past,
such a situation would give the producers the option of either issuing the
score on two discs or not releasing the transitions at all. Now
technology gives them a less draconian set of solutions. The transitions
have been made available for downloading for free from the label's website (www.psclassics.org).
It is a worthy effort on their part, but the execution isn't quite as good as
it could have been. Each transition merges with the song that follows it, so
the transition as available for download includes the first few moments of
the song - thus, you can't program your CD player to play the score in order
with the transitions but without repeating the portion of the following
songs that are included in the transitions. It is nice to have these and to
know how they worked, but the doubling up on the song openings makes them
something of an academic exercise.
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