MAURY SINGS YESTON: THE DEMOS Released Today

PS CLASSICS has announced the release of Maury Sings Yeston: The Demos to commemorate the 75th birthday of Tony Award-winning composer Maury Yeston. The album is now available in digital and streaming formats today, Yeston's milestone birthday, Friday, October 23. The iTunes download includes a 29-page booklet with complete lyrics, historical photos, and detailed liner notes. A 2-disc CD set will be released in stores and online on Friday, December 11. The 40 tracks of Yeston singing and playing his compositions draw from a wide range of sources, from his Tony Award-winning scores for Nine and Titanic and his exquisite stage adaptation of Death Takes a Holiday to the unproduced Queen of Basin Street, the concept album Goya, a smattering of pop tunes, and several theatrical works still in progress. Nearly half the songs, here performed with the boundless enthusiasm and unique passion of the composer, are being heard by the public for the first time. Maury Sings Yeston is produced by Bart Migal.

"In some ways, Maury Sings Yeston plays less like a set of demos and more like an undiscovered solo disc by a great American singer/songwriter," says the label co-founder Tommy Krasker. "Professionally recorded in studios over a forty-year period, these solo performances - several with elaborate multitracked vocals - capture the giddiness of creation with nuance, consummate skill, and an extraordinary vitality of interpretation. Housed under one roof, they illuminate the breadth of Maury's output, and highlight not only the humanism, wit, and soaring melodic writing that he's sustained across a four-decade career, but how much of his own sensibility he has poured into his work."

"These demos are my personal, private notes," comments Maury Yeston. "They're first drafts. Those who are familiar with the final versions of a number of these selections as they ultimately appeared in shows may find it interesting to see what remains and what changed in these early drafts. I have spent a lifetime teaching musical theatre composition with the same watchword as a core principle: The art of writing is the art of rewriting. I hope these drafts will inspire every new writer to persist."

Maury Sings Yeston continues two decades of musical collaboration between Mr. Yeston and the label, which previously released the Tony-nominated 2003 Broadway cast album Nine, the Off Broadway cast album Death Takes a Holiday, Laura Osnes' If I Tell You (The Songs of Maury Yeston), the ballet Tom Sawyer, the all-star recording The Maury Yeston Songbook, and most recently the new Off Broadway musical revue Anything Can Happen in the Theater: The Musical World of Maury Yeston. PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker began his professional career as rehearsal pianist on the original Broadway production of Nine.

"MAURY SINGS YESTON: THE DEMOS"

Music & Lyrics by Maury Yeston - Performed by Maury Yeston

NINE (1982)

1. The Bells of St. Sebastian

2. Unusual Way

3. The Germans at the Spa

4. Simple

THE QUEEN OF BASIN STREET (1981)

5. The Queen of Basin Street

6. Salt 'n' Pepper

7. Mississippi Moon

8. Bad News

9. The Mardi Gras Ball

DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY (2011)

10. Alive!

11. More and More

12. Life's a Joy

13. Roberto's Eyes

14. Something's Happened

GOYA: A Life in Song (1989)

15. Viva España

16. Picture It

17. I Will Paint Sounds

18. Bon Soir

TITANIC (1997)

19. Doing the Latest Rag

20. Barrett's Song

21. Lady's Maid

22. Sitting at the Captain's Table

23. The Proposal/The Night Was Alive

24. No Moon

CLUB MOSCOW (2010)

25. Kolya

26. Soviet Union Blues

27. Tell Me About Your Wife

28. To the Future

IN THE BEGINNING (1987)

29. Baby at 110

30. New Words

31. One for a Rainy Day

32. My Brother Abel

33. The Nileside Cotillion

34. No Man's as Wonderful

35. Three Steps Forward

36. Down on the Farm

RAMAYANA (1972)

37. Nowhere to Go But Up

A TRIO OF SONGS

38. Another Day in the Modern World (1981)

39. Valentine (1992)

40. December Time (2011)