Ghostlight Records Releases 2015 New York City Center Encores! Cast Recording of LADY, BE GOOD!

Ghostlight Records Releases 2015 New York City Center Encores! Cast Recording of LADY, BE GOOD! 1 Ghostlight Records will release the 2015 New York City Center Encores! Cast Recording of Lady, Be Good!, the classic musical with a score by George and Ira Gershwin. The album will be released in digital formats on Friday, September 18 with the physical CD online and in stores on Friday, November 13. The album is produced by Rob Fisher – who conducts the 30-piece Encores!Orchestra – and Scott Lehrer, with Kurt Deutsch serving as Executive Producer. The recording features a 20-page full-color booklet with an essay by Rob Fisher and a detailed synopsis by Encores!  Artistic DirectorJack Viertel. The Encores! Cast Recording of Lady, Be Good! was generously underwritten by Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg. New York City Center’s blog is offering an exclusive “First Listen” to two tracks: “Fascinating Rhythm” and “So Am I.” To pre-order the CD, please visit www.sh-k-boom.com/ladybegood.

23B389964-DA6F-F427-E49ADF2D6DFFBC04Ghostlight Records will release the 2015 New York City Center Encores! Cast Recording of Lady, Be Good!, the classic musical with a score by George and Ira Gershwin. The album will be released in digital formats on Friday, September 18 with the physical CD online and in stores on Friday, November 13. The album is produced by Rob Fisher – who conducts the 30-piece Encores!Orchestra – and Scott Lehrer, with Kurt Deutsch serving as Executive Producer. The recording features a 20-page full-color booklet with an essay by Rob Fisher and a detailed synopsis by Encores!  Artistic DirectorJack Viertel. The Encores! Cast Recording of Lady, Be Good! was generously underwritten by Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg. New York City Center’s blog is offering an exclusive “First Listen” to two tracks: “Fascinating Rhythm” and “So Am I.” To pre-order the CD, please visit www.sh-k-boom.com/ladybegood.

Lady, Be Good!, which ran for seven performances from February 4 to 8, 2015, was directed by Mark Brokaw and choreographed by Randy Skinner. Founding Encores! Music Director Rob Fisher was the production’sMusic Director. Most of Lady, Be Good!’s original orchestrations disappeared long ago. Encores! reconstructed the original score with the generous support of the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Broadway Musical Restoration Fund. The restoration was supervised by Encores! Founding Music Director Rob Fisher, with Bill Elliott creating the missing orchestrations.

Lady, Be Good! tells the story of a penniless brother (Danny Gardner) and sister (Patti Murin) who crash a garden party in hopes of some quick nourishment. They resolve to marry for money, but love gets in the way, as it usually does. Before true love wins out, they encounter Mexican gangsters, crooked lawyers, wealthy socialites, and a song-and-dance man with fascinating rhythm (Tommy Tune).

The 1924 musical embodies the madcap spirit of the Roaring Twenties, when George and Ira Gershwin’s first hit collaboration ushered in the Golden Age of American musical comedy. Hot off the triumph of Rhapsody in Blue, George and his brother Ira delivered a Jazz Age score that featured “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Oh, Lady, Be Good!” and “The Half of It, Dearie, Blues.” Lady, Be Good! opened at the Liberty Theater on December 1, 1924 and ran for 330 performances. It has music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin with a book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson. The original production starred Fred and Adele Astaire.

The album includes performances by Colin Donnell, Danny Gardner, Jeff Hiller, Erin Mackey, Patti Murin, Richard Poe, Douglas Sills, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Tommy Tune and Kirsten Wyatt. Additional ensemble members are Charissa Bertels, Ward Billeisen, Kerry Conte, Darien Crago, Cody Davis, Nicolas Dávila, Christine DiGiallonardo, Leah Edwards, Drew Franklin, Joe Grandy,Tiffany Haas, Drew Humphrey, Megan Kelley, Cara Kjellman, Timothy McDevitt, Jason Mills, Kristyn Pope, Jake Primmerman, Lindsay Roberts and Kelly Sheehan.

New York City Center (Arlene Shuler, President & CEO) has played a defining role in the cultural life of the city since 1943. It was Manhattan’s first performing arts center, dedicated by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia with a mission to make the best in music, theater, and dance accessible to all audiences. Today, City Center is home to many distinguished companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, City Center’s Principal Dance Company, as well as Manhattan Theatre Club; a roster of renowned national and international visiting artists; and its own critically acclaimed and popular programs. The Tony-honored Encores! musical theater series has been hailed as “one of the very best reasons to be alive in New York.” In 2013, City Center launched Encores! Off-Center, a series featuring landmark musicals filtered through the lens of today’s most innovative artists. Dance has been integral to the theater’s mission from the start, and dance programs, including the annual Fall for Dance Festival, remain central to City Center’s identity. Vital partnerships with arts organizations including Jazz at Lincoln Center and London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre enhance City Center’s programmatic offerings. City Center is dedicated to providing educational opportunities to New York City students and teachers with programs such as Encores! In Schools and the Young People’s Dance Series. Special workshops cater to families, seniors and other groups, while events such as the Fall for Dance DanceTalk series offer learning opportunities to the general public. In October 2011, City Center completed an extensive renovation project to revitalize and modernize its historic theater. 

“LADY, BE GOOD!” TRACK LIST         

All tracks are by George & Ira Gershwin unless otherwise noted                                                               

  1. Overture
  2. Hang On To Me
  3. A Wonderful Party
  4. End of a String
  5. We’re Here Because
  6. Fascinating Rhythm
  7. So Am I
  8. Oh, Lady, Be Good!
  9. Piano Specialty
  10. Finale Act I
  11. Entr’acte
  12. Linger in the Lobby
  13. The Half of It, Dearie, Blues
  14. Juanita
  15. I’d Rather Charleston (by George Gershwin and Desmond Carter)
  16. So Am I (Reprise)
  17. Oh, Lady, Be Good! (Reprise)
  18. Little Jazz Bird
  19. Carnival Time
  20. Swiss Miss (by George Gershwin, Arthur J. Jackson and Ira Gershwin)
  21. Finale

ABOUT SH-K-BOOM & GHOSTLIGHT RECORDS

Sh-K-Boom with its imprint Ghostlight Records has become the leading independent force in Original Broadway Cast Recordings – building a library of over 150 records in the last 15 years, featuring some of the most successful Broadway musicals and solo albums by Broadway’s brightest stars. Founded by Grammy Award winner Kurt Deutsch, Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight has won three Grammy Awards (for The Book of Mormon, In the Heights and Beautiful – The Carole King Musical) and is a frequent nominee, most recently for the OBCR of the 2014 “Best Musical” Tony Award winner A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Other notable recent releases include the 2014 “Best Score” Tony Award winner The Bridges of Madison County, Disney’s Newsies, Pippin and Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, adding to a catalogue that includes OBCRs of Next to Normal, Hair, Legally Blonde, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Everyday Rapture, Passing Strange, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Drowsy Chaperone and many more Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. The label has also released solo albums from some of Broadway’s biggest names: Patti LuPone, Sherie Rene Scott, Adam Pascal, Sutton Foster, Kelli O’Hara, Alice Ripley, Christine Ebersole, Melissa Errico and Ben Vereen. The label continues to support the new generation of musical theatre composers with their extensive relationships with Michael John LaChiusa (Giant, See What I Wanna See, Little Fish) and Michael Friedman (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Fortress of Solitude), as well as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tom Kitt, Pasek & Paul, Joe Iconis, Ryan Scott Oliver, Shaina Taub, Dave Malloy, Kerrigan & Lowdermilk and Adam Gwon. The label recently created a new joint publishing venture with Razor & Tie to represent songwriters that fuse theatrical and pop music. Sh-K-Boom Entertainment is a producer of the acclaimed film version of The Last Five Years, written and directed by Richard LaGravenese and starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan.  www.sh-k-boom.com