Feature: Carpenters Legacy celebrates 1-year residency at Modern Showrooms.

Sally Olson, starring as Karen Carpenter, and Ned Mills starring as Richard Carpenter, celebrated one year of their residency, Carpenters Legacy, at the Modern Showrooms at Alexis Park Resort with shows Sunday to Thursday and the big celebration July 27.

Along with their very successful residency, Sally and Ned also released a new album, Carpenters Legacy: 1976, recorded at Skeleton Key Recording in Las Vegas with studio engineer Bobby Ferrari. The album spotlights what is performed in the show. Sally and Ned are working on a documentary, Carpenters Legacy: We’ve Only Just Begun, about the album’s production and the show.

“Our album is similar to their album, Live at the Palladium, which reflects what the Carpenters were doing in their live performances,” says Sally. “We include their big hits medley as we perform in the show, and we added bonus tracks ‘Love is Surrender’ and ‘Desperado.’ We also recreated a Japanese commercial with the Carpenters singing the jingle for Suntory Pop sodas. We also produced ‘Superstar’ with our own unique twist that I perform in Spanish.”

“We decided to take one of the Carpenters’ greatest hits and give it a fresh coat of paint. I arranged ‘Superstar’ with a Latin Reggaetón beat and also a bolero beat on the verses, giving this classic a new texture,” adds Ned. “Although Sally studied French and not Spanish in college, she was able to sing the new Spanish lyrics with a beautiful and rich interpretation. We believe this fresh rendition of ‘Superstar’ will have a broad international appeal just as the Carpenters’ multi-language hit ‘Sing’ did.”

According to Ned, recording the album was challenging for several reasons. It took several weeks to find a vinyl mastering facility and a production plant not booked up over a year in advance. They would discover John Golden of Golden Mastering and Warren Hull of Musical Recording. "Come to find out that John Golden happened to be sitting next to the Carpenters at the Grammys when they won their first Grammy Award for ‘(They Long To Be) Close To You,’ which really added to the album," explains Ned.

“The only way to authentically recreate the iconic Carpenters’ vocal harmonies is to record them in the same manner as Richard and Karen did. Each harmony line had to be sung by Sally and me twice to create a rich sound. So creating four-part vocal harmonies took eight tracks, and five-part harmonies took ten tracks. The other challenge was with the production of the vinyl album. You can’t simply transfer a master recording from a CD to a vinyl album. First, it has to be remastered all over again to attain optimal fidelity for vinyl. Then an acetate test record is made to listen for any imperfections in the vinyl record. Then five vinyl test pressings are made to do one final check to make sure everything sounds perfect,” he says.

Some of Las Vegas’s finest musicians played in this project, including John Plows on drums, Mark Speights on guitar, James D’Arrigo on reeds, Gabriel Santana Falcón on percussion, and Dave Hart, who performs a beautiful harmonica solo on “Desperado.”

To purchase the album on streaming platforms, including Spotify, click here. To purchase the CD or vinyl album, click here. The album can also be bought in person at The Modern Showrooms

While the show has been very popular in other venues, Modern Showrooms at Alexis Park Resort offers the vintage feel of the times with a very modern, upscale experience. While the actual anniversary date was July 18, the show was dark, so Carpenters Legacy will celebrate performing 230 shows on July 27.

Carpenters Legacy starring Sally Olson and Ned Mills will be performed at The Modern Showrooms at Alexis Park Resort, 375 E. Harmon Ave. The show performance is Sunday through Thursday at 7 p.m. For more info, visit carpenterslegacy.com. 

To post a comment, you must register and login.