Amazon.com: The big winners at the 1999 Tony Awards were revivals or old dance numbers recycled into new shows. Yet earning the most nominations, nine (and taking home two awards, for book and original score), was an honest-to-goodness new American musical by a young American composer-lyricist, Jason Robert Brown (who was 28 when the show premiered at Lincoln Center in December 1998 and was best known for his song cycle Songs for a New World). In addition, the subject matter is serious and dark, based on the true story of Leo Frank, a New York-born Jew living in Atlanta who was falsely accused of raping and murdering a young girl, and not surprisingly, the run was limited to 84 performances.
The original cast recording survives, however, and from the stirring opening anthem, "The Old Red Hills of Home," Brown's score is full of riches, mixing period American styles with strong melodies, intricate counterpoint, selective dissonances, and natural lyrics that give their characters true, expressive voices. Leading the strong ensemble cast are Tony nominees Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello as the persecuted Leo and his wife, Lucille, who had been drifting apart before the wrenching events pulled them back together. They express their relationship in some of the show's best songs ("Leo at Work/What Am I Waiting For," "You Don't Know This Man," "All the Wasted Time"). Masterfully evoking scene and character through his beautiful, bouncy, or harrowing music, Brown depicts youthful abandon ("The Picture Show"), the city's hysteria, the tender memories of the girl's mourners ("It Don't Make Sense"), and the murder trial, including its fantasy scenes of false testimony. Parade is a powerful work that will long linger in your memory, and it's one of the most important musical theater releases of 1999. --David Horiuchi
An Amazing Broadway Debut If you you know Jason Robert Brown it's probably from The Last Five Years or Songs for a New World. What you may not realize is that Parade is his Broadway Debut. Songs was open before this, but not on Broadway. As his debut, this is an amazing piece of work. The music is stunning and powerful, complex but extremely pleasing. The emotion that all of Browns music is able to convey is never missing from this score. The singers are generally good, the story is enjoyable and you don't need a synopsis to get the gist of it. Prince actually approached Brown with the idea for an American Opera, so most of the story takes place on this CD. Brown's Ensemble numbers are as good as the solo heart rippers, and the ever stunning duets (that you will find in ALL his scores.) This is a CD for Brown fans, Broadway collectors, and even older listeners. I strongly suggest you get this CD. Fav Song: "It's Hard to Speak My Heart."
Parade Recording I absolutly love Jason Robert Brown's music, and this is no exception. The main charecters really convey emotion well.
An amazing and utterly underrated work I first became acquainted with this musical when I was 10 years old and they performed This Is Not Over Yet on the Tony Awards. At theatre camp, we actually did a dance number to People of Atlanta. But it wasn't until last summer that I bought the cast recording of this amazing score and fell in love with this show.
From the first sounds of the snare drum, Jason Robert Brown's rich, varied, and absolutely gorgeous score sucks you in. Words cannot express how I feel about this score. So many powerful, moving, heartbreaking, and thrilling moments. It's stunningly clear why this score won the Tony. And yet, this show always seems to recede into the background. An undeserved fate to be sure. In my eyes, this is a truly important addition to musical theatre on the same scale as such shows as Ragtime, LaChiusa's The Wild Party, Floyd Collins, and The Light in the Piazza.
As for the cast, my goodness!!! What voices!!!! They are what make this score glitter. Words cannot describe their performances either.
This score is too good to be true. That the bankruptcy of its production company was what led to its premature demise is a tragedy. For goodness' sake, buy Parade, a true hidden gem in the musical theatre canon.
Good, but not Brown's best "Parade" is an excellent show, as anyone who has seen it will tell you. It has the power to move an audience to tears. Historically accurate or not (and honestly, I couldn't tell you), it is a very powerful, very finely crafted piece of theatre as a whole.
The score by itself, on the other hand, is just good. Not excellent, but good. Were there an option to rate this CD at 3.5 stars, I would. There are some amazing moments in this score--for example, "The Old Red Hills of Home" is simply breathtaking, while the funeral music ("It Don't Make Sense") is heart-rendingly beautiful, then overpoweringly furious. When it's not amazing, though this score tends to just sit there, not going anywhere. Anyone familiar with Jason Robert Brown knows that his other scores--"The Last Five Years" and "Songs for a New World" (I'm not counting "Urban Cowboy")--are pure genius. While Brown is obviously passionate about this material, for some reason it's not as consistently inspired--or inspiring--as his other scores. It's still good, but because of those discrepancies I have mentioned, it is not great.
Despite all this, I would recommend this CD very highly to anyone intersted in musical theatre. I disagree with a previous reviewer who said that anyone to whom Sondheim's work is soul food will find this score unfulfilling. True, it's not pure genius, but, once again, as a whole, it's thoroughly worthwhile.
Parade the Musical Although little known, Parade has some of the best music of a new musical in the last twenty years. Since Parade only played for a short time on Broadway and has received few productions elsewhere, it is almost completely unknown by the general public, yet it has a fantastic score with music from a wide variety of genre from ballad to ragtime to hymns. I highly recommend this CD to anyone who loves music.
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