Broadway Records Will Release RAGS PARKLAND SINGS THE SONGS OF THE FUTURE Original Cast Album

Broadway Records announced today that the original cast recording of Andrew R. Butler's Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future will be released digitally and in stores on Friday, March 27, 2020. The album is currently available for pre-order at www.BroadwayRecords.com.

The Original Cast Recording of this award-winning new musical doubles as a sci-fi concept album, intercutting fictional live recordings of two concerts - one that resurrects the folk music of the 23rd century's civil rights movement - and one that places you in the heart of that life or death struggle, at the underground concert of blues-rock rebels (and constructed humans) Beaux Weathers & The Future. The never-before-heard audio of the band's final performance is framed by the return-to-Earth concert of The Future's only human-born member, Rags Parkland. Combined, they paint an all too familiar picture of perseverance in the face of persecution- a rallying cry for vigilance against the hatred that fuels human evil as we turn the corner into the 24th century.

Rags Parkland Sings The Songs Of The Future opened on October 15, 2018 to universal acclaim at Ars Nova. Created by Andrew R. Butler, a former Ars Nova resident artist and 2018 Jonathan Larson Grant recipient, this sci-fi folk concert was directed by Jordan Fein. The production won the 2019 Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical and was nominated in six categories.

Rags Parkland was selected by Jesse Green in The New York Times as one of the Best of Theater 2018. He wrote, "Taking up the challenge of the classic works of musical theater, this sci-fi folk-blues musical by Andrew R. Butler aimed to update the formal expressiveness of songs as narrative. Set in an underground club 250 years from now, it slipped a political tale about environmental disaster, totalitarianism and dispossession into a concert setting, letting the clichés of pop lyrics (lost love, ticking hearts) do double duty as clues to the realities of a dystopian future. At the same time, in a gorgeously shabby Ars Nova production directed by Jordan Fein, it reassured us that as long as humans (or androids) can gather to hear music, music will have something to say."

Green also highlighted Rags Parkland as part of the 2019 Tony Awards coverage in The New York Times stating that Butler should have been nominated for Best Score.

In her New York Times critic's pick review, Alexis Soloski found Rags Parkland "significant and surreptitiously moving" and called it "a little musical with big, sad, beautiful ideas. It packs so much story into so little space that physicists will quail." Raven Snook in her Time Out New York critic's pick review said this "slyly provocative new musical" has "a glorious, deeply felt score" while TheaterMania's Zachary Stewart declared that Rags Parkland "turns out to be one of the most surprisingly delightful and imaginative musicals of 2018."

The cast for Rags Parkland Sings The Songs Of The Future included Rick Burkhardt, Andrew R. Butler, Tony Jarvis, Jessie Linden, Stacey Sargeant and Debbie Christine Tjong

The creative team included Madeline Smith (music director), Laura Jellinek (scenic design), Andy Jean (costume design), Barbara Samuels (lighting design), Mikaal Sulaiman (sound design), Jhanaë K-C Bonnick (production stage manager), John C. Moore (assistant stage manager) and Henry Russell Bergstein, CSA (casting director). Orchestrations, arrangements and additional music by Rick Burkhardt, Andrew R. Butler, Jessie Linden, Tony Jarvis, Maya Sharpe, Madeline Smith, and Debbie Christine Tjong.

The original cast recording is produced by David Treatman and Tony Maimone.

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