The Story of My Life- now on iTunes...

My copy came last Friday (I'll be featuring selections from it on my program this Sunday - May 31 - as well as tracks from Malcom Gets and Stephanie J. Block's new CD's.)

The score is as strong as I remembered it from the Toronto premiere.

If you are a fan of scores that delve into character and are rich in emotional textures this is a score you will love. There is a detailed synopsis in the booklet but the songs (and dialogue) on the discs tell the whole story.

Malcolm Gets is a superb Alvin, but the real revelation hjere is Will Chase as the troubled author Thomas. (I confess a fondness for Brent Carver's Alvin in Toronto, but then I didn't get to see STORY OF MY LIFE in New York, and perhaps if I had I would have enjoyed Gets' performance just as much. No perhaps. I am sure of it.) Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations are deliciously spare. This is an intimate 2-character show that I suspect will soon be done in regional theatres and on University campus stages. Many of the songs will become standard audition material.

Take note that this is not the first score by Neil Bartram (and his bookwriting partner Brian Hill) and it certainly won't be their last. These are two immensely talented writers, and anyone who cares about the future of the lyric theatre will be well advised to watch and listen to what they come up with next.

There were some that said that STORY OF MY LIFE belonged in an off-Broadway house - that it was too small a show for Broadway. No - Broadway was to small for this show. But we have the cast album and that will assure a future life for this piece.

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Updated On: 12/6/09 at 07:20 PM

i had the demo, but my computer crashed and i lost it... hmmmm. let me see if i had it backed up on my external.

as for why it didn't do well? it was flawed, personally i loved it, but it wasn't perfect. the word of mouth seemed really positive, but the critics did not agree.

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i would LOVE that audio.

i saw the show several times, both in CT and on Broadway, something about it just caught me.

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Yes, I'm glad this show was recorded. Wish I could have seen it. Now, what I'd like is what I thought I read the subject of this post was: a cast recording of "In My Life."

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