Kim Criswell is an American singer and stage actress originally from Chattanooga, TN, who made appearances in several Broadway musicals in the 1980s but found her greatest recognition in Great Britain, where she appeared on a series of studio cast recordings of classic American musicals: Anything Goes (EMI, 1989), Kiss Me, Kate (EMI, 1990), Annie Get Your Gun (EMI, 1991), Fifty Million Frenchmen (New World, 1991), etc. Her 1993 disc The Lorelei is a solo album, but it fits in with her other recordings. Accompanied by the ...
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Kim Criswell is an American singer and stage actress originally from Chattanooga, TN, who made appearances in several Broadway musicals in the 1980s but found her greatest recognition in Great Britain, where she appeared on a series of studio cast recordings of classic American musicals: Anything Goes (EMI, 1989), Kiss Me, Kate (EMI, 1990), Annie Get Your Gun (EMI, 1991), Fifty Million Frenchmen (New World, 1991), etc. Her 1993 disc The Lorelei is a solo album, but it fits in with her other recordings. Accompanied by the Ambrosian Chorus and the London Sinfonietta under conductor John McGlinn, who employs the original orchestrations, Criswell addresses songs written for shows between 1933 and 1953 by Irving Berlin, Comden & Green, Leonard Bernstein, Dietz & Schwartz, George & Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, and Kurt Weill. Criswell does not stick only to the standards, even though such familiar titles as "It Never Entered My Mind," "You and the Night and the Music," "I Love Paris," and "I Got Rhythm" are included. Rather, she delights in resurrecting songs like the title tune, from the Gershwins' 1933 London musical Pardon My English and not much heard since. There are even some real unknowns, such as the Comden & Green/Bernstein "Dream With Me," cut from both On the Town and Peter Pan, and Berlin's "Let's Go West Again," intended for Annie Get Your Gun but not used. Criswell is at her best when she is most energetic, furiously selling a song like Porter's "The Leader of a Big-Time Band" (from Something for the Boys), and she relishes the comic story-songs "Jenny" (aka "The Saga of Jenny," from Lady in the Dark) and "Katie Went to Haiti" (from Du Barry Was a Lady). For anyone who hasn't heard her string of studio cast albums, Criswell may be an unknown quantity in her native land, but this album should change that; show music fans should be delighted. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi
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