Episode 16 - The Complete Stephen Sondheim

This week I chat with Patrick Pacheco who helped the late Chita Rivera write her autobiography - Chita: A Memoir. Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero – Chita – created some of Broadway’s most iconic roles, including Anita in West Side Story‚ Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie, Velma in Chicago, Aurora in Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Claire in The Visit. Patrick and I talk about these shows and such luminaries as John Kander, Fred Ebb, Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr., Gwen Verdon, and more.

I speak with Matt Gould, composer and co-librettist, of the new Broadway musical Lempicka. We chat about the show and his approaching to writing music.

Author Stephen Cole talks about his fictional, time-traveling novel, MARY & ETHEL…and Mikey Who?, which has taken the real-life friendship with Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, tossed them into a blender and come up with a fantasy about a nerdy super-fan.

I chat with Martin Fitzgibbon, who was a young drummer in the band during the creation of the The Rocky Horror Show in 1973. In his memoir, Behind the Curtain: My Life and Rocky Horror, he discusses the show, giving his unique insight into how the musical and its participants became an overnight success and created a cultural phenomenon still going strong over 50 years later.

SoundsofBroadway's Stuart Brown talks about our current Bracket Challenge - Favorite Musical From the Golden Age (Oklahoma! in 1943 through the year 1964). Each week, listeners pick the winners in head-to-head matchups – just like ‘March Madness’ – until we narrow down the field of 64 to just one ultimate favorite. Vote now! Just go to SoundsofBroadway.com.

I chat with Van Dean, a Grammy and Tony-winning producer who has just launched a new record label, Center Stage Records. Previously, he ran Broadway Records. We talk about, among other topics, his new record company and the art of producing a cast recording.

The 18th episode in a series on the complete works of Stephen Sondheim. Rick Pender, the author of the The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia, is our musical guide. For this episode, we feature the musical The Frogs. The show is a musical "freely adapted" by Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove from The Frogs, an Ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes. The Frogs was originally performed in Yale University's gymnasium's swimming pool in 1974. The show was produced on Broadway in 2004 with the book revised by Nathan Lane and the score expanded by Sondheim.

I chat with Brian Stoll, an uber Broadway fan who has seen over 285 shows in the past decade, all at under $60 a ticket. He has developed a presentation, “Broadway on a Budget,” that he has presented at libraries and other venues, where he shares his money-saving tips on how to see Broadway shows, his love for Broadway, and even the history of the Playbill.

I chat with the composer, lyricist, and librettist Douglas J. Cohen about his book, How to Survive a Killer Musical: Agony and Ecstasy on the Road to Broadway. The book chronicles his decade-long quest to bring his musical, No Way to Treat a Lady, to the stage—writing, re-writing, and shepherding it across the US and Europe amidst all manner of adversity and plain rotten luck.

The 17th episode in a series on the complete works of Stephen Sondheim. Rick Pender, the author of the The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia, is our musical guide. For this episode, we feature the musical Saturday Night. This was supposed to be Sondheim's first Broadway show in 1955 until the untimely death of the lead producer scuttled the work.