Broadway Star Solo Albums

I'd definitely check out Tony Yazbeck's album, "The Floor Above Me."

I really enjoy Rachel Bay Jones' Showfolk. Nice stripped down arrangements of showtunes.

I enjoyed Idina Menzel's last cd and am loving Billy Porter's new one. His duet with india arie is just sublime, in my opinion.

Updated On: 6/18/17 at 03:33 PM

Tony Yazbeck - The Floor Above Me

Euan Morton - Caledonia

Wow! Buckley sounds like a Munchkind on that cover of "One Boy." LOVE! Love! LOVE!

One of my favourites, "Presenting Karen Akers" released in 1980:

Also love a lot of Pearl Bailey and Diahan Carroll's albums from the 50s and 60s.

More of a cabaret act but Jane Krakowski's "Laziest Gal in Town" is spectacular!

I've always been a big fan of Kristin Chenoweth's first album, Let Yourself Go, The rockin' title tune is from the Astaire - Rogers film Follow the Fleet, which was a rare singing and dancing solo for Ginger. There is a zest on this album generally that makes it better in my opinion to her reverential treatment of the standards that Chenoweth sings in her latest.

The songs are largely an eclectic delight, with well known, barely remembered, barely forgotten and unknown selections. The second cut is from a Broadway revue Two on the Aisle, music by Jules Stein, book and lyrics by Comden and Green. The song is a very funny "If", where Chenoweth regretfully decides that she must shoot her husband and then launches into a mile a minute string of reasons why she would not have had to kill him "IF" he hadn't done a lot of funny rhyming things. She invited Comden and Green to attend the recording and they obliged.

There is also a cute duet with dialog with Jason Alexander, Gershwin's "Hangin' Around With You," which you may remember from "Nice Work" a few years back. And I think "The Girl in 14-G" might have been a concert feature since a lot seem to know it already. Ms. Chenoweth is subject to musical attack from the floor below and the floor above. Probably those who saw Kristin in concert about ten years ago might know quite a few of the songs from the concerts.

Kelli O'Hara's latest album Always I found a little disappointing. She is so talented and intelligent that you just expect perfection from her. Here her independence leads her to choosing songs she may like more than you. But there is lots of good. Hear her sing the song that I think she said is her favorite song to sing even when by herself just for the good feeling: "I Could Have Danced All Night."

And the feature of the album, which judging from the last two times I saw her in concert is also becoming the feature of her concerts, is the astonishing tour de force, to use an overused phrase, of the seven minute "They Don't Let You in the Opera (If You're a Country Star)" It received the loudest reception easily of anything sung at a concert in Stony Brook, Long Island before a rather sedate audience of older couples. The guys who conceived and wrote this piece should be on hand also to take a bow.

Updated On: 6/17/17 at 02:58 AM

I love Bernadette's live album, Sondheim, Etc.



Just before she'd lose her voice, Julie Andrews released two albums, one of lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and another by Richard Rodgers. Apparently it was to be a series of albums with different lyricists (and maybe composers, too?) but alas, it was not to be. We're lucky to have these anyway, and while her voice isn't in it's prime, she sounds so warm and rich and she's very much in control.

Can you relate to the excitement from getting 13 albums for a penny by joining the Columbia Record Club?

If so, then like me, you may enjoy the trip down memory lane with Marin Mazzie on Make Your Own Kind of Music: Live at 54 Below.

Marin shares nostalgic nuggets from her adolescence and had me in stitches with her version of Evergreen.

Some of my favorites include Anyone Who Had a Heart and Son of a Preacher Man. Her rendition of Weekend in New England is transporting.

This album made me love Marin on a deeper level and I highly recommend it.

Melissa's Marin Mazzie recommendation reminded me of a 2005 album of duets sung with her husband Jason Danieley that I thought was a wonderful album. Opposite You. May be hard to get now. Love those counterpoint duets. Here Irving Berlin's "Simple Melody," "An Old Fashioned Wedding," "You?re Just in Love"

A quintet of Sondheim, "Happiness", "Good Thing Going", "Too Many Mornings", "Not a Day Goes By", "Move On."

Honeysuckle Rose, Debbie Reynold's very funny "Aba Daba Honeymoon."

I really like Jay Armstrong Johnson's Live at Feinstein's/54 Below (for some reason I really loved his version of Rosanna) and Bernadette Peters' Sondheim, Etc. is a classic to me. Laura Benanti's is also cute.

I second Sutton Foster's Live at the Cafe Carlyle. It's one of my favorite albums period. I love listening to it, as we get a glimpse of her personality along with several songs from her album WISH and her Broadway roles.

I also enjoy both of Laura Osnes's albums, DREAM A LITTLE DREAM, also a live album at the Carlyle, and IF I TELL YOU, an album of Maury Yeston songs based on a concert she did at 54 Below. The live album is obviously a better mix, though I probably slightly prefer IF I TELL YOU.

Josh Groban's STAGES is also excellent, as is Alice Ripley's DAILY PRACTICE, which is an album of acoustic rock covers.