The First Baron

Okay, so first i'd like to share my latest discovery. :D Well, he's not really a discovery to the actually world, he's been around for a while, but I have to honor him some how because of his astonishing voice and I wish he was appreciated a bit more.

So I was watching that awesome video of Brent Barrett and Michael Jeter (RIP, but he's not the center of todays piece, although i might do one on him later) dancing like a madman in the Tony performance of Grand Hotel, I wiki'd up the musical and realized that the sexy Brent was in fact NOT the original Baron (although he did a damn good job playing it).

The original Baron was this man named David Carroll, whose last production was in fact, Grand Hotel. He left the show pretty early due to sickness. 2 years later when the song-writers finally settled their bitching over song rights, They finally decided to make the cast recording of "Hotel". By then, Carroll was already very ill with the late stages of HIV. This poor man literally DIED the day recording for the OBC of Grand Hotel started... in the bathroom of the recording studio... Very sad.

So i tried to search him up, finding this video of him sing "Anthem" from Chess (again, as the original cast member). Most of you know Chess from the 2008 concert version with Adam Pascal and Idina Menzel, and "Anthem" being sung by THE Josh Groban. I thought it couldn't get better than Josh. I was SO wrong. Originals kick ass, and this was GORGEOUS. Whoever caught it live was one lucky cow. One of the very few of the dying species that is "the musical theater baritone".

And who better to obsess with me about David Carroll than our very own Seth Rudetsky! For those who don't know Seth... well you should... or you have been deprived of all MT awesomeness. Anyway I'll let you see for yourself. Seth explains Carroll's death then goes on to do a deconstruction of his song "Love Can't Happen" from - guess what - Grand Hotel. Listen to the last note. and look at Seth's face when David hits that note xD.

This song was so good i actually bought it off iTunes. RIP David Carroll. Your beautiful voice will ring forever in my heart.

That aside, below was a small side discovery of a video i found from the user who posted the Chess song. An awkwardly cute song that makes me smile. And yes, that's Anthony Rapp (the 3rd RENT-y i mentioned today).

Senior Retreat tmr... yay... i have to wake up EARLIER than i do on school days... My head is exploding from self-produced stress. I'm a sad person. Ah well, Sheehan will pull me out of my my misery tmr. He was seriously on a ROLL today with the jokes during the workshop. Love him to bits.

Peace out,

Tenshi

Jets and Sharks and Scrubs

Once again, i have returned from a blogging hiatus, mostly because i've been so engrossed in my summer I've barely had time to really sit down and thing about anything to write. But to recap, after Vassar, I visited Brown and Yale, then headed straight to CMU for pre-college drama. In short, it was epic. You can find our pretty awesome counselors dancing to "Single Ladies" here.

Since my mother was out today I took advantage of the empty house to finally let go and belt in prep for this years musical Into the Woods. So while I was screaming "I Know Things Now" at the top of my lungs, my mind wandered and I decided to go on a YOUTUBE ADVENTURE WOOT!!!

I landed on some old clips of West Side Story. One of them was a rehearsal video for a segment at the 2007 Gypsy awards for the 50th anniversary of WWS with about 22 of the ORIGNAL cast members. Watching 70 year old Jets singing and snapping their fingers made me cry tears of joy. Oh and Chita Rivera was... Chita Rivera... only she was 74 years old and doing the Gym Dance. I honestly couldn't stop watching the video. MAMBO! :)

Continuing on that adventure led to a clip from an episode of Scrubs that pays homage to WWS by paralleling Jets and Sharks to "medical" and "surgical" (dances included) and a very familiar fire escape scene between Turk and J.D. This pretty much revived my love of Scrubs after my recent revival of my love for Chuck. What can i say? I have a thing for leading men whose first names are Zach.

Then COMPLETELY unrelated, after a stop on Broadway.com I spotted a rather interesting new play running on off-broadway now called Trust starring - what do you know - Zach Braff. Also starring Sutton Foster... as an S&M dominatrix... WHAT???!!! See for it yourself ---> Click. What makes me laugh even more is that Braff references West Side Story in the preview video for the show. If you're in New York, run to your local TKTS and please see this play for me, cuz it sure looks interesting.

Thats just about it for today. Tmr, I will official be a Senior and start my last year of high school.

Peace out,

Tenshi