MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG Encores! Recording Released Today, July 10!

PS Classics releases the Encores! cast recording of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG today, July 10th! The 2-disc album, originally set to be released June 19th but postponed due to technical issues, features a 52-page full-color booklet, with essay, synopsis, lyrics, and more than two dozen photos.

In 2012, New York City Center’s Encores! series premiered this new version of Merrily We Roll Along, starring Colin Donnell as Franklin Shepard, Celia Keenan-Bolger as Mary Flynn, Lin-Manuel Miranda as Charley Kringas, Adam Grupper as Joe Josephson, Elizabeth Stanley as Beth and Betsy Wolfe as Gussie Carnegie, and featuring a 23-piece orchestra conducted by Rob Berman.

The cast also includes Zachary Unger, with Whit Baldwin, Rachel Coloff, Ben Crawford, Joshua Dela Cruz, Bernard Dotson, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Marja Harmon, Leah Horowitz, Mylinda Hull, Michael X. Martin, Sean McKnight, Kenita R. Miller, Patricia Noonan, Andrew Samonsky, Pearl Sun, Charlie Sutton, Jessica Vosk, Karl Warden and Michael Winther.

Merrily We Roll Along, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth, is a musical about friendship and the compromise of youthful ideals, based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The show moves backwards in time from 1976 to 1957 and examines the lives of three people whose friendship is tested by time, events, ambition and fate. It charts the rise of a songwriting team during the years of Sondheim's own early career and includes some of his most brilliant and bruising songs, such as "Not a Day Goes By," "Old Friends," "Our Time" and "Opening Doors."

The track listing for the album includes:

Disc One:

1. Overture
2. Merrily We Roll Along
3. That Frank
4. First Transition
5. Like It Was
6. Franklin Shepard, Inc.
7. Second Transition
8. Old Friends
9. Growing Up
10. Third Transition
11. Not a Day Goes By
12. Now You Know

Disc Two:

1. Entr' acte
2. Gussie’s Opening Number
3. It's a Hit!
4. Fourth Transition
5. The Blob Part I / Growing Up (Reprise)
6. Good Thing Going
7. The Blob Part II
8. Fifth Transition
9. Bobby and Jackie and Jack
10. Not a Day Goes By (Reprise)
11. Sixth Transition
12. Opening Doors
13. Seventh Transition
14. Our Time

Samples of some of the songs can be heard on PS Classics website at http://psclassics.com/cd_merrilywerollalong.html.