Judy Kuhn, Patrick Page, and More Join New Album 'Lives of the Artists'

On May 2, 2025, Broadway composer Mel Marvin (Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Yentl, Tintypes) will release LIVES OF THE ARTISTS, a concept album, featuring a dozen multi-talented theater and recording artists, including: Chuck Cooper (The Life, Trouble in Mind), Lilli Cooper (Tootsie, Spring Awakening), Aisha de Haas (Rent, Caroline, or Change), Darius de Haas (Kiss of the Spider Woman, Marie Christine), Santino Fontana (Tootsie, Billy Elliot), Ben Jones (Beautiful City, One Second and a Million Miles),  Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer (Spamalot, Beetlejuice),  Judy Kuhn (Fun Home, Les Mis), Elizabeth Ward Land (Memphis, Passion), Veronica Mansour (How to Train Your Dragon Jr., Lighthouse), Betsy Morgan (Kimberley Akimbo, High Fidelity), Patrick Page (Hadestown, The Grinch).

When Marvin won a fellowship to spend spring 2023 in Florence, Italy, he approached his long-time collaborator, novelist Jonathan Levi (A Guide for the Perplexed, Septimania). Having spent the COVID years developing their third opera Truth & Reconciliation, Levi suggested something completely different—an album of songs.  A conceptual album based on a Florentine masterpiece—Giorgio Vasari's 1568 announcement of The Renaissance, LIVES OF THE ARTISTS. A gossipy riff on his artist-buddies Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, and their models, collectors, and critics, Vasari's LIVES has entertained and educated for half a millennium.

Over that Italian spring, Marvin set Levi's lyrics in eleven songs in styles ranging from R & B, rock, pop, hip hop, and classical, channeling the lives of Vasari's artists and others from a more recent renaissance. Michelangelo's religious doubts after years flat on his back with a paintbrush in the Sistine Chapel (Painting on the Ceiling); Botticelli's model for his Primavera singing to the painter, buried at her feet in a chapel in Florence (Venus). Raphael's mistress railing against the Vatican for blaming his death on her passion (The Baker's Daughter). Peggy Guggenheim, who centuries later collected art and artists on her walls and in her bed (Just Collect).

In 2024, Marvin and Levi brought in a friend and colleague, composer/orchestrator Greg Pliska (War Horse, Sylvia, Summer 1976) to act as producer and arranger for the record. The three began a process of rehearsal and exploration that culminated in a weeklong recording session at the legendary Sear Sound at the hands of Pliska's longtime collaborator, recording engineer Gary Maurer (Hem, Fountains of Wayne; Twelfth Night, Amelie). More than a dozen of New York's finest musicians joined the process, including some of Broadway's best-known string, wind, and brass players. 

Even before the release, Marvin and Levi have been invited to present LIVES OF THE ARTISTS in a theatrical incarnation in Florence in the summer of 2026.

LIVES OF THE ARTISTS will be available on all major streaming platforms including Spotify, YouTube, and Apple.