THE MEMORY SHOW Cast Album, Featuring Leslie Kritzer & Catherine Cox, Now Online

By: Mar. 10, 2015
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YELLOW SOUND LABEL has released the Off-Broadway cast recording of the new musical The Memory Show today online via Amazon.com, Spotify and other digital outlets. The physical CD will be available online and in stores on March 24. Originally presented in New York by Transport Group, the show has music by Zach Redler and book and lyrics by Sara Cooper with direction by Drama Desk nominee Joe Calarco. Vadim Feichtner serves as music director with orchestrations by Lynne Shankel. The Memory Show stars Leslie Kritzer (Sondheim on Sondheim, A Catered Affair) and Tony Award nominee Catherine Cox (Baby, Footloose). The new recording is produced by Emmy Award-winner and Grammy Award-nominee Michael Croiter (Matilda, Big Fish, Heathers). Order the album at www.yellowsoundlabel.com.

The Memory Show is a darkly funny portrait of a mother and daughter's struggle to make sense of their relationship when faced with disease and hardship. The show combines evocative and powerful contemporary music with a humorous, touching and heartfelt examination of colliding perceptions, truths, desires and memories that are inherent in familial relationships.

When The Memory Show was presented Off-Broadway by Transport Group in 2013, it was called "a poignant, sophisticated and often humorous musical" by The Associated Press. "Kritzer and Cox fearlessly commit to their respective characters, and beautifully depict the heartbreak that Alzheimer's brings to a family," said TheaterMania.com. According the New York Daily News, the show "joins the deservedly acclaimed Next to Normal in pushing the envelope as to what subjects can make a musical."

The Memory Show was developed and produced in 2010 at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, MA (Julianne Boyd, Artistic Director; William Finn, Artistic Producer) and was previously presented at the National Alliance for Musical Theater's "Festival of New Musicals" in 2009.

The Memory Show New York production featured scenic design by Brian Prather, lighting design by Chris Lee, costume design by Kathryn Rohe, and sound design by Walter Trarbach.

Redler and Cooper were recently awarded the 2014 Jonathan Larson Grant from the American Theatre Wing for their music theater work and the 2015 New York State Council on the Arts Individual Theatre Artist Commission for the show Putting Off Goodbye. The team has also collaborated on Loving Leo, which won the "New Musical" award by the Weston Playhouse in 2012 and was recorded for a demo by Sh-K-Boom Records. Zach and Sara also developed their opera Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner with the Virginia Arts Festival and New York University. They were Van Lier Fellows at American Opera Projects where they developed Male Identity and the set of monodramas Windows.

Yellow Sound Label is a Grammy Award-nominated, cutting-edge record company that produces both established performers and up-and-coming artists. The boutique label takes a hands-on approach in nurturing and producing passionate, focused performers and composers who create quality, noteworthy recordings. The label has featured the best of Broadway (Matilda, Big Fish, First Date), Off Broadway (Heathers - The Musical, The Burnt Part Boys, Murder Ballad, The Shaggs), theater luminaries (Chita Rivera, Alan Cumming, Telly Leung, Christopher Jackson), and rising songwriter/composers (Marcy & Zina, Kerrigan & Lowdermilk, Lance Horne, Michael Patrick Walker). www.YellowSoundLabel.com.

ZACH REDLER (Music) is an award winning composer, pianist, arranger, copyist, musicologist and musical director based in New York City. In 2008, Zach's first musical, Perez Hilton Saves The Universe (book by Tim Drucker and Randy Blair, lyrics by Randy Blair), won Best Musical Fringe Festival. From 2011-2013, Zach was in residence at American Opera Projects as part of their "Composers and the Voice Program." Librettist Mark Campbell (Silent Night, Manchurian Candidate, The Shining) and Zach began working on a new opera based on the crime and arrest of Susan Smith. Selections from the opera will be presented at Fort Worth Opera's Frontiers New Works Showcase in May and University of Colorado Boulder will present a workshop of the piece at CU NOW in June. Opera Memphis commissioned Zach to write a short opera as part of their "Ghosts Of Crosstown" series. Movin' Up in the World premiered in April 2014 with subsequent performances at the National Civil Rights Museum this past September and an upcoming performance at the University of Missouri. Zach's music has been performed at Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, Opera America, National Opera Center, Joe's Pub and concert halls around the country and has been critically acclaimed by the New York Times, Variety and the Boston Globe. As a musicologist, Zach's research and study of Auschwitz victim Marcel Tyberg's life and music has culminated in five world premieres by the Buffalo Philharmonic and two distinguished grants (NYU's Collaborative Arts Grant and support from the Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies). Zach is now preparing and editing Tyberg's entire body of works for Boosey & Hawkes. www.zachredler.com

SARA COOPER (Book & Lyrics) is the recipient of awards from New York State Council on the Arts Individual Theatre Artist Commission (2015); New York International Fringe Festival Overall Excellence Award in Playwriting (2014); Time Out New York "Critics' Pick" for Things I Left On Long Island (2014); Anna Sosenko Assist Trust Recipient (2014) and National Endowment for the Arts and National Alliance for Musical Theatre National Fund grants for The Memory Show; Weston Playhouse New Musical Award (2012); Queens Council on the Arts Grant Recipient (2012); American Opera Projects Fellowship, Van Lier Fellow (2011-2012); Bronfman Artist Award (2009). As a playwright, bookwriter, and lyricist her recent productions include: the play Things I Left On Long Island, New York International Fringe Festival (2014); the musical ??????? / Mitos / Kamanalis, Colegio Civil Centro Cultural Universitario in Mexico, music by Jaime Lozano; The Tenth Floor (book), New York Musical Theatre Festival (2010), music and lyrics by J. Sebastian Fabal; Emergency Contraception!: The Musical, Theater for the New City (2007), and We Love You, Johnny Hero, New York International Fringe Festival (2006), both with music by Chris Shimojima. Sara is currently working on her new feminist musical theatre piece Elevator Heart, which will have a concert at Dixon Place in April. SaraCooper.weebly.com

JOE CALARCO (Director) Off Broadway credits include the world premieres of Boy and In Transit (Drama Desk nomination, Best Director), at Primary Stages, The Burnt Part Boys and Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky at Playwrights Horizons, the world premieres of The Summer of the Swans and Sarah, Plain and Tall at the Lucille Lortel, the world premiere of The Mistress Cycle for The New York Musical Theatre Festival, the world premiere of Fugitive Songs (Drama Desk Award, Best Musical Revue), and the first New York revival of Bury the Dead for Transport Group. He was just nominated for a Drama Desk Award for directing Patrick Barlow's adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Joe is the adaptor/director of Shakespeare's R&J, which ran for a year and earned him a Lucille Lortel Award. He also directed the play's premieres in Chicago (five Jeff Award nominations including Best Play and Best Director), Washington D.C. (Helen Hayes Award nominations for Best Play and Best Director), London (Evening Standard Award honorable mention Best Director) and Tokyo. Joe is currently Director of New Works at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia.



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