Overview

Experiencing Broadway Music: A Listener’s Companion explores approximately the last century of American musical theater, beginning with the early–twentieth-century shift from European influenced operettas and bawdy variety shows to sophisticated works of seamlessly integrated song and dance that became uniquely American. It concludes with an examination of current musical trends and practices on Broadway. As a musician who works on Broadway and in developmental musical theater, Kat Sherrell draws on her knowledge both as a historian of Broadway musical form and as a professional Broadway musician to offer an insider’s perspective on the development and execution of the past and present Broadway scores. Despite its enormous breadth, and given the historical significance of the musical in modern popular culture, Experiencing Broadway Music provides listeners—whether they know musical theater well or not at all—with the tools and background necessary to gain an understanding of the highly variegated structure and character of the Broadway musical over the past century.

Full Product Details

9780810889002

Table of Contents

Reviews

This entry in the Listener's Companion series covers 15 American musicals, including such classics as Anything Goes, Showboat, and Porgy and Bess as well as the contemporary Rent, Wicked, and Hamilton. Musician Sherrell uses these shows to illustrate why Broadway musicals are so significant in modern popular culture. Chapters cover the plot and songs of each show profiled, and Sherrell intersperses discussion of musical styles and themes throughout the narrative-her various explanations of the music of Hamilton are nothing short of dazzling. There are many glossy coffee-table guides and encyclopedic works on musicals, but this close-lens look will appeal to both Broadway fans and music lovers in general. Booklist

Author Information

Kat Sherrell is a conductor, pianist, and writer. Her work in New York has included Broadway shows In the Heights, Bring It On and The Book of Mormon and NBC’s Smash, as well as many new musicals in various stages of development, including Sweethearts of Swing, for which she is the lyricist-composer.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available