FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: ALIVE AND KICKING Cast Album Released Today!

DRG Records announces the release of the cast recording of Forbidden Broadway: Alive and Kicking, The UN-Original Cast Album, produced by Hugh Fordin, and available on iTunes and in stores today, November 27, 2012. The recording will be available for download for $9.99 on iTunes; individual tracks will be available for $.99 each.

Featured on the album are cast members Natalie Charlé Ellis, Scott Richard Foster, Jenny Lee Stern and Marcus Stevens, with David Caldwell on piano.

What started as a small cabaret act at West 72nd Street’s Palsson’s Supper Club is now one of New York City’s best-loved and most highly anticipated musicals. Now celebrating its 30th year, Forbidden Broadway is a theatrical institution joining the ranks of A Chorus Line and The Phantom of the Opera as one of the longest-running shows in New York.

Forbidden Broadway: ALIVE AND KICKING, The UN-Original Cast Album features Gerard Alessandrini’s parodies of Broadway’s biggest shows and brightest stars, including Annie, Newsies, Once, The Book of Mormon, Spiderman, Evita, Porgy and Bess, Anything Goes, and Follies, as well of send-ups of Catherine Zeta Jones, Matthew Broderick, Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin, among others.

Forbidden Broadway: ALIVE AND KICKING opened on September 6, 2012 after a three-year absence from New York, and has been breaking box office records ever since. Due to overwhelming popular demand and rave reviews, the run of Gerard Alessandrini’s brand-new Forbidden Broadway: Alive and Kicking has been extended through April 28, 2013 at the 47th Street Theatre (304 West 47th Street – just west of Eighth Avenue). The show is directed by Gerard Alessandrini and by Phillip George, with musical direction by David Caldwell and additional dialogue by Phillip George.

Critical and audience reception has been overwhelming. Recent backstage visitors have included Carol Burnett, Stephen Sondheim, Mike Nichols, Lesley Stahl, Diane Sawyer, and Michael Kors.

Producer Hugh Fordin was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from the School of Speech and Dramatic Art at Syracuse University, he began to produce summer touring shows and road companies of Broadway plays and musicals... He then produced Edith Piaf’s final concerts in Paris and had arranged her farewell American tour shortly before her death in1963. He worked as head of casting for David Merrick before joining Twentieth Century-Fox, where he cast “The Boston Strangler” and “Hello, Dolly!” In 1973, he wrote his first book, “The World of Entertainment – The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM” which was followed by the authorized biography of Oscar Hammerstein II, “Getting To Know Him.”

DRG Records Incorporated was formed by Hugh Fordin in 1977. Its first recording was “A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green,” recorded live on May 1, 1977. Since then, Mr. Fordin has produced and recorded over three hundred and fifty Broadway cast albums (including one – “The Producers” produced for SONY Music Entertainment – for which Mr. Fordin received a Grammy Award. In addition, DRG Records has received sixteen of its own Grammy Award nominations through the years.

The DRG Records catalog currently contains three hundred twenty-seven studio albums of jazz or popular recording artists including Peggy Lee, Anita O’Day, Grammy Award winner Cleo Laine, Grammy Award winner Shirley Bassey, Hadda Brooks, Ruth Brown, Grammy Award winner Patti Page, Grammy Award winner Gerry Mulligan, Annie Ross, Grammy Award nominee Barbara Cook, Karen Akers and many others. DRG has also reissued over forty-seven studio and motion picture soundtrack albums under licenses with Capitol Records, SONY BMG Entertainment and Warner Bros. Records.

In 1991, Michael Koch purchased a major interest in DRG Records and DRG was made a part of Koch Distribution in the United States and Canada. In January, 2006, Koch Entertainment was purchased by EntertainmentOne (eOne), a publically traded Canadian company. In June 2009, Koch Distribution U.S. legally changed its name to eOne Entertainment U.S. Though part of the eOne Entertainment family, DRG Records remains autonomous and apart from eOne, and Mr. Fordin remains as its president. DRG Records continues to work internationally through its network of direct worldwide licensees and affiliates which include JVC and Victor in Japan; RSK in England; Universal in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg; Nuba/Karonte in Spain; Shock in Australia; and Gallo in South Africa and other English speaking territories.

The DRG Records website/mail order division (which is fulfilled by eOne) currently comprises nearly twenty percent of DRG’s retail sales volume. DRG distributes its product digitally under a direct agreement with Itunes and also distributes product digitally on the eOne website.

For more information, visit www.drgrecords.com.

Forbidden Broadway: ALIVE AND KICKING, The UN-Original Cast Album
DRG Records – Available TODAY, November 27, 2012
Produced by Hugh Fordin
Featuring: Natalie Charlé Ellis, Scott Richard Foster, Jenny Lee Stern and Marcus Stevens, with David Caldwell on Piano.