Ricky Ian Gordon's musical Sycamore Trees receives studio-live hybrid cast album

Cast recordings and albums

Ricky Ian Gordon Musical Plane trees to get Studio Live Hybrid Cast Album

The cast of the work, which premiered in 2010 at the Signature Theatre in Virginia, includes Farah Alvin and Judy Kuhn.

The Ricky Ian Gordon musical from 2010 Plane trees is finally getting a cast album, a mix of live and studio recordings. The release will be out on digital and streaming platforms via PS Classics on August 30th, with a limited edition physical CD edition to follow on September 20th.

The autobiographical musical premiered at the Signature Theatre in Virginia in 2010. The upcoming album was compiled from an archive recording of a live performance by sound designer Matt Rowe and new studio recordings of the original cast to fill in some gaps. Press notes promise a finished product that reflects both the live performance of the work and “the precision and breadth of a studio mix.”

The cast features numerous Broadway favorites including Farah Alvin, Marc Kudisch, Judy Kuhn, Jessica Molaskey, Matthew Risch, Diane Sutherland and Tony Yazbeck.

The orchestrations are by Bruce Coughlin and are conducted by Fred Lassen, with Andrew Resnick at the piano. Tommy Krasker and Bart Migal produced the new album, with Migal responsible for the audio restoration.

The musical, which chronicles Gordon's turbulent childhood and early adult life, features a score by Gordon and a book by Gordon and Nina Mankin. Tina Landau (Play mother) directed the production in 2010. Earlier this year, Gordon published his life story as a memoir entitled Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs and Opera.

“To have this original cast recording come to the world 14 years after its premiere is like the best birthday present ever,” Gordon said in a statement. “It was so far from anything I ever thought possible, this incredible cast, these amazing players. My gratitude for everything that was done to make this possible – to everyone who said yes, to everyone who supported it, to everyone who worked on it, and of course to my lifelong friend [PS Classics co-founder] Tommy Krasker – is infinite, immeasurable.”

“Philipp [Chaffin, fellow co-founder] and I was lucky enough to see a performance of Plane trees in 2010,” Krasker adds. “We wanted to record it then, but it was such a crazy time for us. We were doing live albums with Kate Baldwin and the Callaway Sisters and had already committed to The wife of a minister And Death takes a vacation Off-Broadway. We just didn't get it done. Over the years, Ricky and I have regretted the fact that we couldn't produce an original cast album – especially not with this great group of actors. But this year, as plans for Ricky's autobiography were taking shape, he asked me to Plane trees Record live and see if we can do anything. Needless to say, audio technology has advanced dramatically in the last 15 years — especially in the last couple of years. Fifteen years ago, if you had a “board mix” of a musical — a recording that was never intended for public consumption — all you could do was slap the “recorded live” stamp on the box and hope the listener would forgive the noises, the glitches, the cavernous theatrical sound and the laughter that drowned out important lyrics. But now new technology allows us to remix and refine the mix, to give these great performances and orchestrations a real studio sheen. I won't pretend it sounds exactly like we recorded in the studio — but for such new technology, I was amazed at how close we came. The audio restoration was led by my co-producer Bart Migal, and as with every recording we do together, he created magic. Plane trees is such an important work, I'm glad we finally had the opportunity to release a proper recording of it.”

Gordon’s previous albums on PS Classics include his opera Grapes of Wrathhis musicals My life with Albertine And Dreams come trueand song cycle Only the sky.

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