BMI Debuts 'Songbook Podcast' with Never-Before-Heard Music

The BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop is proud to announce the debut of The BMI Workshop Songbook Podcast, a podcast series of never-before-heard songs by members and alumni from the Tony honored workshop.

Twenty new songs have been chosen to be published in an upcoming songbook, accompanied by a 20-episode podcast, each showcasing one song with interviews with the writers and singers. The podcast can be accessed at www.bmi.com/fridayatfour

The theme song of the series, "Friday at Four," is taken from the musical A Class Act (music and lyrics by Workshop alumnus Ed Kleban, lyricist for A Chorus Line), where within the production, the BMI Workshop convenes every Friday at 4PM. In honor of the theme song, a new podcast episode will be uploaded each Friday at 4PM.

This week's debut episode features Brian Darcy James (Next to Normal, The Apple Tree) singing Patrick Cook and Rick Freyer's song, "Gonna Spend the Whole Day Fishin."

Future episodes will include performances by Michael Arden, Liz Callaway, Will Chase, Victoria Clark, Jenn Colella, Gavin Creel, Erin Dilly, Christine Ebersole, Mary Beth Peil, Craig Fols, Hunter Foster, Ann Harada, Neil Patrick Harris, Cheyenne Jackson, Lauren Kennedy, Natalie Weiss, Sally Wilfert, and more. Writers from the collection range from new Workshop members to such distinguished alumni as Maury Yeston (Nine, Titanic), Michael John LaChiusa (The Wild Party, Hello Again), Bobby Lopez (Avenue Q), and Amanda Green and Tom Kitt (High Fidelity). Jeff Blumenkrantz will host the series.

Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI) is an American performing right organization that represents more than 350,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in all genres of music and more than 6.5 million works. BMI¹s latest financial results, $839 million in performing right collections for its 2007 fiscal year, are the highest for any copyright organization in the world. BMI has represented the most popular and beloved music from around the world for over 65 years. The non-profit-making U.S. corporation collects license fees from businesses that use music, which it then distributes as royalties to the musical creators and copyright owners it represents.