Caitlin Kinnunen, Krystina Alabado and More to be Featured on SELECTIONS FROM THE PATH TO CATHERINE

CENTER STAGE RECORDS will release Selections from The Path to Catherine in streaming and digital formats on Friday, September 19. Featuring music by Jan Roper and book and lyrics by Patricia Zehentmayr, the album includes ten songs from the new musical. 

The album features Tony Award nominee Caitlin Kinnunen (The Prom), Krystina Alabado (Mean Girls), Sharon Wilkins (Seussical), Sophia Oda (“The Suite Life of Zack & Cody”), Zakiya Young (“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin”), and Maiya Sykes (La La Land).

The Path to Catherine is the true backstory of Sophie, the teenage girl who will become Catherine the Great, and the two women whose lives would ignite her extraordinary destiny. In 1744 Russia, Princess Sophie arrives as a prospective bride for the heir to the empire. Caught between her ambitious mother Joanna’s manipulation and Empress Elizabeth’s ruthless pragmatism, Sophie enters a glittering world of betrayal and court intrigue. When her intended proves callow and dismissive, Sophie must choose between her mother's calculated schemes and Elizabeth's dangerous mentorship. A life-threatening fever becomes her crucible, exposing Elizabeth's unexpected tenderness and Joanna's treacherous ambitions. As secrets unravel and ultimatums thunder through the palace halls, the court's machinations threaten to consume her. Sophie confronts a cruel choice between blood and destiny. Through devastating consequences, she learns that power has a price; that price is family.

ABOUT Jan Roper

Jan Roper is a composer and music director. Her theater career started with the full-scale production of her own original rock opera, Jerusalem A.D. in 2006. Another original work, City of Light, was chosen for the ASCAP Stephen Schwartz Workshop (2016) and the sheNYC Festival (2017), where it won Best Score. City of Light has also been featured as a “new work to watch” at Feinstein’s/54 Below in NYC after a sold-out concert reading there in 2018. In 2019 Jan had a featured song in the new world premiere, Girlhood, produced by CPA Theatricals.

Another new work, América Tropical, won the 2020 Raise Your Voice playwright competition, sponsored by Inclusion Media Group, and was a semi-finalist for the National Musical Theatre Group and a finalist for the Jonathan Larson Grant in 2022. América Tropical was awarded Equity readings by McCoy-Rigby Entertainment at the La Mirada Theater and Musical Theatre West in Long Beach, both in 2022. She stays busy as a faculty accompanist and teacher at AMDA College of the Performing Arts, and a vocal and music director in the local theater and cabaret community of LA. She won the L.A. Scenie Award for Music Director of the Year for her accumulative work in 2019 and early 2020.