Transport Group has announced that its production of Queen of the Mist, words and music by five-time Tony Award nominee Michael John LaChiusa, directed by four-time Drama Desk Award nominee Jack Cummings III, will be recorded by Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight Records on January 3, 2012.
Queen of the Mist opened November 6, 2011, and played an extended run at The Gym at Judson Memorial Church through Sunday, December 4, 2011, with a cast that featured D.C. Anderson, Stanley Bahorek, Theresa McCarthy, Julia Murney, Andrew Samonsky, Tally Sessions, and Mary Testa. They will all be featured on the cast recording. Orchestrations are by Tony Award winner Michael Starobin and musical direction is by Chris Fenwick who will conduct the original seven-piece orchestra for the recording.
Based on an astounding, outrageous, and haunting true story, Queen of the Mist starred two-time Tony nominee Mary Testa as Anna Edson Taylor, who, in 1901 at the age of 63, set out to be the first woman to shoot Niagara Falls—in a barrel of her own design. Navigating both the treacherous Falls and a fickle public with a ravenous appetite for sensationalism, this unconventional heroine vies for her legacy in a world clamoring with swindling managers, assassins, revolutionaries, moralizing family, anarchists, and activists. Convinced that there is greatness in her and determined not to live as ordinary, she sets out to battle her fear and tempt her fate. With a score that incorporates turn of the century themes with signature LaChiusa elements, Queen of the Mist is the story of a single great fall, and how one woman risked death so that she could live.
Founded in 2001, Transport Group, under the leadership of Jack Cummings III, Artistic Director, and Lori Fineman, Executive Director, is a not-for-profit theatre company that stages new works and re-imagined revivals by American writers. Their visually progressive productions of emotionally classic stories explore the challenges of relationships and identity in America. Transport Group is the winner of a special Drama Desk Award for its “breadth of vision and its presentation of challenging productions.” Transport Group presented its premiere production in 2002: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which featured older actors in the roles of Emily and George and a twelve-year-old girl as the Stage Manager. Its second production, Requiem for William, an evening of seven seldom produced plays by William Inge, that featured a cast of 26 as well as original songs, premiered in 2003. In 2004 the company presented the first New York revival of Michael John LaChiusa’s First Lady Suite, which received rave reviews, played to sold-out houses, and earned two Drama Desk Award nominations including Outstanding Revival of a Musical. Other productions include the world premiere of the musical The Audience, which featured a cast of 46 actors and earned three Drama Desk Award nominations, including Outstanding Musical; Normal, a new musical about a mother’s battle to save her daughter from anorexia; cul-de-sac, a new play by Tony Award nominee John Cariani; the first New York revival of Tad Mosel’s Pulitzer Prize play, All the Way Home; the 50th anniversary, OBIE-winning production of William Inge’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs; the world premiere musicals Crossing Brooklyn, Marcy in the Galaxy, and Being Audrey, and the first New York revival of Irwin Shaw’s Bury the Dead. Both First Lady Suite and Bury the Dead were filmed for the New York Performing Arts Library’s Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at Lincoln Center. In 2010 Transport Group presented a sold-out, extended engagement of Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, which received an OBIE Award and was nominated for five 2010 Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Revival of a Play—the most for an off-Broadway play. Transport Group’s productions of See Rock City and Other Destinations by Brad Alexander and Adam Mathias, and Hello Again by Michael John LaChiusa combined for eleven 2011 Drama Desk Award nominations and one win. Transport Group’s production of Lysistrata Jones, by Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn, opened to rave reviews, played to sell-out houses, and transferred to Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre where it opened on December 14, 2011. The company most recently completed a critically acclaimed run of The Patsy and Jonas at The Duke on 42nd Street, starring OBIE winner David Greenspan. For more information about Transport Group visit www.transportgroup.org.
Sh-K-Boom with its imprint Ghostlight Records has become the leading independent force in Original Broadway Cast Recordings – building a library of over 100 records the last 10 years, featuring the most successful Broadway musicals and solo albums by Broadway’s biggest stars. Founded by Kurt Deutsch and wife Sherie Rene Scott, the label was created by and for the Broadway community and has garnered acclaim not only for their high-quality recordings, but for their innovative marketing techniques and efforts to reach the next generation of Broadway music fans via iTunes, social networking, music videos and more. Ghostlight recently celebrated a major milestone with their release of The Book of Mormon, which became the first Broadway cast recording to break into Billboard’s Top 10 (topping out at #3) since the original 1969 release of Hair, as well as taking its place as the biggest-selling digital release of a cast recording of all time. Also just released on the label are the OCRs of Catch Me If You Can, Sister Act and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, as well as solo albums from some of Broadway’s biggest stars: Sutton Foster, Kelli O’Hara, Alice Ripley, Linda Lavin, Christine Ebersole, Melissa Errico and Ben Vereen. In recent Broadway seasons, Ghostlight has preserved the scores of some of Broadway's most well-known musicals, including the Grammy Award-winning In the Heights, plus Next to Normal, Hair, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Legally Blonde, Everyday Rapture, Passing Strange, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and The Drowsy Chaperone. Coverage of their albums has ranged from Rolling Stone to USA TODAY to The New York Times, from Blender Magazine to Playbill to Billboard, and many more. The company is recognized for reinventing the musical theatre recording landscape, and creating a new type of ‘United Artists’ environment for Broadway producers and artists to participate in the funding and co-ownership of their albums.
