Symphony Space, the arts organization located in a renovated movie theater on Broadway at West 95th Street in Manhattan, celebrated local-boy-made-good Richard Rodgers' centennial with one of its free-admission 12-hour "wall to wall" marathons on March 23, 2002, inviting a variety of Broadway and nightclub performers, as well as enthusiastic amateurs, to perform Rodgers' music continually from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. This 55-minute disc presents excerpts from the long show, 15 worthy if unsurprising performances from a talented ...
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Symphony Space, the arts organization located in a renovated movie theater on Broadway at West 95th Street in Manhattan, celebrated local-boy-made-good Richard Rodgers' centennial with one of its free-admission 12-hour "wall to wall" marathons on March 23, 2002, inviting a variety of Broadway and nightclub performers, as well as enthusiastic amateurs, to perform Rodgers' music continually from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. This 55-minute disc presents excerpts from the long show, 15 worthy if unsurprising performances from a talented group of artists including Melissa Errico, Debbie Gravitte, Mary Cleere Haran, Judy Kaye, Maureen McGovern, James Naughton, Billy Stritch, and K.T. Sullivan. There is a lot of singer-with-piano emoting here, along with some singing accompanied by an orchestra, and 11 of the 15 selections feature the lyrics of Lorenz Hart, with only five songs by Oscar Hammerstein II (one track is a medley of two Rodgers & Hammerstein tunes). So, the album feels like a Rodgers & Hart nightclub act, for the most part. That's fine; the singers are uniformly excellent. But a better sense of the scope of the show might have been given if at least a couple of Rodgers rarities and lesser-known performers had been included. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi
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