All tagged Kurt Weill

Remembering One Touch of Venus

Remembering One Touch of Venus

Mark Robinson
Music That Makes Me Dance

A musical that we don’t hear much about these days, but one that features a glorious score, is the 1943 classic One Touch of Venus. Based on a story by Thomas Anstey Guthrie, One Touch of Venus loosely draws from the Pygmalion myth with a book by poet Ogden Nash and S.J. Perelman, lyrics by Nash, and music by Kurt Weill (debatably his most accessible and traditional in terms of musical comedy, save perhaps Lady in the Dark). Of the musicals Kurt Weill wrote for Broadway, it would be his longest-running, though arguably his least innovative. 

Back to Before - Why Everything that Came Before RENT Still Has Relevance

Back to Before - Why Everything that Came Before RENT Still Has Relevance

Mark Robinson
Music That Makes Me Dance, Back To Before

Last week, there was an interesting discussion and debate on the Cast Recordings Facebook page over an article titled Twelve Cast Recordings That Will Change Your Life. There was a lot of back and forth over the piece since it mostly discussed newer musicals and one film soundtrack and seemed to dismiss almost everything in the pre-Rent era. There is nothing wrong in having your life changed by newer cast recordings. Indeed, musical theatre would be a very limited genre if we established some sort of cutoff point for musicals worthy of our attentions. The piece was obviously written by someone young and enthusiastic and it's easy to see how he'd be attracted to the contemporary pieces of his lifetime. That being said, the article was titled "Cast Recordings that will Change YOUR Life", so the author makes the egregious assumption that all of us will be taken with the titles he mentions. This proved not to be so when a variety of enthusiasts weighed in and admonished the absence of many classic titles on this list.