Rare Jonathan Larson Song Question

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/5/05 at 5:19pm

A few years back when I saw Audra McDonald in concert, she sang a song by Jonathan Larson. I believe it is called "Hosing the Furniture". It is a hysterical song about a house made of plastic for the world's fair expo that was cleaned with a hose. The song is written from the point of view from a wife who lives in such a house. Does anyone know any more about this song and if it has ever been recorded?

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/5/05 at 6:11pm

bump

where are all you Jonathan Larson fans when I need you?

[Unknown User]

Posted: 5/5/05 at 6:25pm

I would love to hear songs like that

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/5/05 at 11:35pm

Seriously...Not a single person knows about this song?

[jesseeinstein]

Posted: 5/5/05 at 11:58pm

I too would love to hear this

[BWIDB Charlie]

Posted: 5/6/05 at 2:55am

That sounds like it was from Superbia?

[rusmic]

Posted: 5/6/05 at 3:14am

I don't know this song but I found this on a page about a concert by Audra McDonald and what she sang

Jonathan Larson:
Hosing the Furniture from "Sitting on the Edge of the Future"

Maybe that'll give you a little more to work with in your search.

[leomaxfrank]

Posted: 5/6/05 at 3:32am

BobbyBubby - Audra came to U of M (2 years ago I believe) and sang that song in a little workshop there. That was indeed the title. I know little of it besides that - sorry! Wonderful song though.

[KelRel]

Posted: 5/6/05 at 9:22am

Found this
Michael Barrett met Jonathan Larson in 1989. At the time, Larson was a struggling young composer whose gifts were just being discovered by music theater insiders. He had been laboring over a new musical called Superbia when the American Musical Theater Festival in Philadelphia called him to participate in a new project. Sitting on the Edge of the Future was to be an evening's entertainment based on the 1939 World's Fair, with a composite score by a number of intriguing theater composers including Ricky Gordon, James Sellars, Michael John LaChiusa, and Jamie Bernstein. The fair had featured a "city of the future," and each of the artists focussed on one of the hotly-discussed scientific advances projected for everyday living — homogenized milk, the dishwasher, and canned meat (Scott Frankel wrote a Fanny Brice-style salute to Spam that will stick in the memory of the lucky few who heard it). Larson came up with "Hosing the Furniture," simultaneously a paean to plastics and a modern-day mad scene. Judy Kaye premiered it at the show's single benefit performance, under the baton of Maestro Barrett. Although Sitting on the Edge of the Future ultimately needed a stronger concept to pull together its disparate elements, Larson's contribution didn't go unnoticed. The show-stopping "Hosing the Furniture" won him the Stephen Sondheim Award, and the attendant recognition and cash gave him some much-needed support. Six years later his musical Rent took the New York theater public by storm; tragically, on the eve of his breakthrough success, he died suddenly of an aortic aneurism.

Still looking for more

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/6/05 at 11:01am

Thanks KelRel. This song is amazing, I hope you all get to hear it eventually. Since Audra's next album is supposed to be jazz standards, I doubt it'll be on there, but I hope someone records this gem.

Seriously, they were going to make houses that were cleaned with a hose. Brilliant.