Sierra Boggess, Ramin Karimloo & More Join Lucy Simon Video Podcast Series

A new podcast series celebrating the life and works of late composer Lucy Simon has launched on the Broadway Podcast Network.

Deadline reports that the five-part series is one of the final projects that Simon worked on prior to her death. "Celebrating Lucy Simon" will feature never-before-heard stories from Simon herself, as well as from collaborators Victoria Clark, Judy Collins, Marshall Brickman, Marsha Norman, and more.

The series will also feature performances by Sierra Boggess and Ramin Karimloo, who performed in a concert version of the musical in 2016. Original Secret Garden stars Daisy Eagan, John Cameron Mitchell, and more will also take part in the podcast.

The podcast series is set to include performances of "Wick," "Come to my Garden" and "Lily's Eyes" from The Secret Garden.

The first episode, which is now streaming, explores the early years of Simon's career with Lucy Simon, Marshall Brickman, Judy Collins and moderator Loraine Alterman Boyle. The episode features "Winken, Blynken, Nod," performed by The Simon Sisters.

Composer Lucy Simon was born in New York on May 5, 1940 to publishing giant Richard Simon and his wife Andrea. She was the second oldest of four children Joanna, Lucy, Carly, and Peter. She grew up in a musical household where her parents entertained the era's leading lights of literature and music like James Thurber, Richard Rodgers, Benny Goodman, and Oscar Hammerstein.

She found her true calling composing for the Broadway stage. She acquired the rights to turn the children's classic book, Little House On The Prairie into a musical and worked with lyricist Susan Birkenhead on it. "That book never worked," Lucy said, "but I learned about writing for musical theatre. So when I was asked to write the music for The Secret Garden, I was ready with my whole heart."

In 1991 she would become only the third female composer to have a show on Broadway. The Secret Garden ran for 709 performances on Broadway, won two Tony awards and has been performed all over the world. Secret Garden's playwright Marsha Norman, who wrote both the book and lyrics and Heidi Landesman, the producer, brought in Lucy as the composer after loving a demo melody she wrote for the lyrics of "I Heard Someone Crying".

Her next musical, Doctor Zhivago, was a passion project spurred by her reading the poems Pasternak as Zhivago wrote at the end of the epic Nobel prize winning novel. "Those poems were my way into the music, my inspiration to tell the story in song." The musical, after almost 20 years of gestation, debuted in Australia before landing on Broadway in 2015.

For her work over the years, Lucy has received a Tony nomination, Grammy and Drama Desk Awards and in 2018 Samuel French Award for Sustained Excellence in American Theater. Lucy also wrote and produced the songs and soundtrack for the multi-award winning HBO movie, The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader Murdering Mom in 1993.

Watch the first episode of "Celebrating Lucy Simon" here: