Those who pre-order the album via psclassics.com will get the package shipped to them on Nov. 15. The label's online price is $14.95, nearly 35 percent off list price. PS Classics is the record label dedicated to the heritage of Broadway and American popular song.
As previously reported, the recording will be produced by PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker, who has overseen more than a dozen Sondheim cast recordings; his label was Grammy-nominated for Sondheim on Sondheim and A Little Night Music in 2010.
Krasker has previously said that Follies was the Sondheim show that he most wanted to record. "I'm aiming to do it up right, with an expansive, lavish two-disc set," Krasker told Playbill.com on Aug. 22.
Follies, which won the 1971 Tony Award for Best Score, has a book by Goldman and music and lyrics by Sondheim.
The Kennedy Center revival now at Broadway's Marquis Theatre first appeared at the Center's Eisenhower Theater in Washington, DC, May 7-June 19. It opened at the Marquis on Sept. 12. Eric Schaeffer directs (and Warren Carlyle choreographs) a cast that includes Bernadette Peters as Sally Durant Plummer, Danny Burstein as Buddy Plummer, Ron Raines as Ben Stone, Elaine Paige as Carlotta Campion, Jan Maxwell as Phyllis Rogers Stone, and more.
James Moore serves as music director and conducts the 28-piece orchestra. Jonathan Tunick’s original orchestrations are being employed for the production. The original cast album severely truncated the ambitious score.
Follies was originally directed by Harold Prince on Broadway in 1971. Since then, it has received a legendary star-filled concert at Lincoln Center in 1985 (preserved on recording), a Roundabout revival on Broadway directed by Matthew Warchus in 2001 (not recorded), a City Center Encores! production in 2007 (not recorded) and numerous regional mountings, including a Paper Mill Playhouse engagement that featured Donna McKechnie and the late Ann Miller (preserved on a cast album). The original cast recording and a London cast recording that includes songs written for that run are also on the market.
PS Classics has preserved many Sondheim productions including Sondheim on Sondheim, The Frogs, Road Show and the most recent revivals of A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George, Company, Pacific Overtures and Assassins.
Follies concerns a group of former "Follies" stars who return to the site of their former glory, the Weismann Theatre, which is about to be demolished. Old wounds resurface as two Follies stars (Phyllis and Sally) and their husbands (Benjamin and Buddy) reassess their lives and what could have been.
Among the show's songs are "Beautiful Girls," "Don't Look at Me," "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs," "Rain on the Roof," "Ah, Paris!," "Broadway Baby," "The Road You Didn't Take," "In Buddy's Eyes," "Who's That Woman?," "I'm Still Here," "Too Many Mornings," "The Right Girl," "One More Kiss," "Could I Leave You?," "Loveland," "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow," "Love Will See Us Through," "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues," "Losing My Mind," "The Story of Lucie and Jessie" and "Live, Laugh, Love."
Follies is produced on Broadway by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (David M. Rubenstein, Chairman; Michael M. Kaiser, President; Max Woodward, Vice President); Nederlander Presentations, Inc.; Adrienne Arsht; HRH Foundation, Sponsor; Allan Williams, Executive Producer.
*
Founded in 2000 by Tommy Krasker & Philip Chaffin, and a six-time Grammy nominee (for its cast albums of Assassins, Nine: The Musical, Grey Gardens, Company, A Little Night Music and Sondheim on Sondheim), PS Classics celebrates the heritage of Broadway and American popular song through its award-winning cast recordings; solo albums by Maureen McGovern, Victoria Clark, Kate Baldwin, Jessica Molaskey and Christine Andreas (among others); and recordings drawn from rare sound archives, including "Sondheim Sings." Summer releases include studio cast albums of the Gershwins' 1930 Strike Up the Band, the long-lost Vernon Duke/Ogden Nash musical Sweet Bye and Bye, plus the live concert album of She Loves Him, Tony nominee Baldwin's tribute to songwriter Sheldon Harnick.
PS Classics recently released the Joshua Schmidt-Jan Tranen score to A Minister's Wife, a new musical based on Bernard Shaw's Candida. Visit the label's website, www.psclassics.com.
Follow Playbill.com managing editor Kenneth Jones on Twitter @PlaybillKenneth.
