BWW Blog: Jeff Blumenkrantz - BRIGHT STAR Cast Recording

Our Bright Star original cast recording (OCR) comes out this week!

I have to confess, I have mixed feelings about cast recordings. On the pro side, it's always a thrill to be a part of one:

• Getting to be in a studio with music professionals.
• Knowing that the show is going to be preserved forever, at least in this form.
• Some extra money.
• Another recording credit.
• A possible appearance on the Grammys. (Kidding, except for Hamilton. And American Idiot, come to think of it.)

But then there are a couple of downsides:

• Typically, the OCR is scheduled for the first day off, post-opening. I suppose this happens because it's ideal for the show to be recorded as early as possible in order to release it as early as possible. But you can't do it too early, i.e. in previews or before, because the show could still be changing and you'd want to be sure to record the finished product. But the day off after opening? That's probably the most needed day off of them all! You've climbed the hill of previews, partied hard at the opening, and did a four or five show weekend! Then, instead of a rest and recovery day, you're singing the show over and over again under the microscope of a microphone in your face! Eek!
• Speaking of that microscope/microphone, it's tricky to reengineer a theatre-sized performance for an up-close-and-personal, audio-only medium. How do I modify my choices without throwing out my whole performance?
• The other thing that has always irked me about cast recordings is that a live performance is a constantly morphing phenomenon. Tempos shift from show to show. You discover things days, weeks, months into the run that deepen and enrich your performance. New phrasings, new slices of sense of humor, new connections. But a cast recording preserves only one performance, and an early one at that.

I remember listening to the OCR for the '95 How to Succeed... revival when it came out, thinking: What??? When did I give that performance? It was so different than the one I was giving by the time the CD was released. I threw it in a drawer and forgot about it. However, the next time I listened to it, maybe five years later, I thought: Not bad! Why was I so bummed about this back then? I guess enough time had passed for me to stop comparing and contrasting.

I'm happy to report that the Bright Star recording was a completely different experience.

We actually did record the show during previews (but after the show was essentially frozen), and it was scheduled very ingeniously for the week when our performance schedule changed, leaving us with two days off in a row. Good thinking, you guys!

We had the great benefit of the presence of two music industry super-pros, Peter Asher, our music supervisor (look him up, he produced a ton of pop recordings that you love, not to mention being a recording artist himself) and Edie Brickell, our cowriter (do I even need to mention? what she is is what she is, are you what you are or what?). Peter ran those sessions with a very clear idea of what he wanted to hear, and I think that's one of the reasons why we ended up with such a beautiful and consistent result.

I remember recording "Another Round." For the first pass, we did our show performances, because isn't that the idea? To record what you do in the show? Well, if you could have seen the faces of the team in the booth... horrified! I guess it sounded pretty Kabuki in there. The next directive was to take a completely different attack, i.e. pull waaaaaay back, sing it like recording artists. They were much happier with that, but honestly, I felt like I wasn't doing anything. We did the pulled back version one more time, and we were done. Hmmm. This is not going to be good, I thought.

Listening back to it though, I have to say, it sounds pretty accurate to me, even though it bears no relationship to how we perform it onstage. Thanks to the expertise of our team, we were shifted into the exactly right gear! Phew!

Lucky for you, you can hear for yourself! NPR has released a sneak peek/listen in anticipation of our digital release later this week! Of course, don't just check out "Another Round." You'll want to hear all the wonderful Brickell/Martin songs performed by our incredible band and cast, in particular the actors who do the bulk of the heavy lifting/singing: Carmen Cusack, Paul Alexander Nolan, AJ Shively, and Hannah Elless.

(Sneaky, huh?)