Deluxe two CD edition. A "miracle" and "revelatory" is how New York Magazine greeted the 2015 New York City Center Encores Off-Center production of William Finn and James Lapine's A New Brain, starring Broadway, film and television star Jonathan Groff (Hamilton, Spring Awakening, Frozen, Glee), along with Christian Borle (Something Rotten), Ana Gasteyer (Saturday Night Live) and Aaron Lazar (A Little Night Music, The Light in the Piazza). Audiences and critics alike welcomed the opportunity to revisit this deeply personal show, largely neglected since it premiered in 1998, and this new production - featuring some canny rewrites by Finn and Lapine - seemed more moving and invigorating than ever before; as New York magazine put it, "sharpening and tightening" the show allows its main theme, "the responsibility we have to use ourselves fully," to emerge more clearly. The score by the Tony Award-winner comprises "madcap, hallucinatory production numbers and gorgeous, tender ballads" (amNY); "both eccentrically individual and universal, these songs evoke the original, piquant talent" (The New York Times) of the composer/lyricist. Now PS Classics has preserved the "starry and beautifully sung" (NY Daily News) production of this 95-minute, through-composed show in its entirety for the first time, in a deluxe double disc set.
1 Prologue: Frogs Have So Much Spring (The Spring Song)
2 Prologue: 911 Emergency/I Have So Many Songs
3 Heart and Music
4 Mother's Gonna Make Things Fine
5 Trouble in His Brain
6 Be Polite to Everyone
7 I'd Rather Be Sailing
8 Family History
9 Gordo's Law of Genetics
10 And They're Off
11 Roger Arrives
12 Just Go
13 Mri Tomorrow
14 Poor, Unsuccessful and Fat
15 Mri Day
16 Sitting Becalmed in the Lee of Cuttyhunk
17 Craniotomy
18 An Invitation to Sleep in My Arms
19 Change
- Disc 2 -
1 Yes
2 In the Middle of the Room (Part 1)
3 Throw It Out
4 In the Middle of the Room (Part 2)
5 A Really Lousy Day in the Universe
6 Brain Dead
7 The Music Still Plays on
8 Don't Give in
9 Craniotomy (Reprise)
10 You Boys Are Gonna Get Me in Such Trouble
11 I'd Rather Be Sailing (Reprise)
12 The Homeless Lady's Revenge
13 Time
14 Time and Music
15 I Feel So Much Spring
Deluxe two CD edition. A "miracle" and "revelatory" is how New York Magazine greeted the 2015 New York City Center Encores Off-Center production of William Finn and James Lapine's A New Brain, starring Broadway, film and television star Jonathan Groff (Hamilton, Spring Awakening, Frozen, Glee), along with Christian Borle (Something Rotten), Ana Gasteyer (Saturday Night Live) and Aaron Lazar (A Little Night Music, The Light in the Piazza). Audiences and critics alike welcomed the opportunity to revisit this deeply personal show, largely neglected since it premiered in 1998, and this new production - featuring some canny rewrites by Finn and Lapine - seemed more moving and invigorating than ever before; as New York magazine put it, "sharpening and tightening" the show allows its main theme, "the responsibility we have to use ourselves fully," to emerge more clearly. The score by the Tony Award-winner comprises "madcap, hallucinatory production numbers and gorgeous, tender ballads" (amNY); "both eccentrically individual and universal, these songs evoke the original, piquant talent" (The New York Times) of the composer/lyricist. Now PS Classics has preserved the "starry and beautifully sung" (NY Daily News) production of this 95-minute, through-composed show in its entirety for the first time, in a deluxe double disc set.
