While A Minister's Wife will not be available for digital download until Sept. 28, PS Classics has announced that they will extend their $9.95 pricing for hard-copies of the album through that date.
"It's an unusual move for us," Krasker told Playbill.com. "We're holding off the digital release for four more weeks. But A Minister's Wife is this stunning work where the songs weave effortlessly in and out of the script. We want folks to hear the score in sequence, in its entirety, and have the pleasure of appreciating it alongside the photos and the synopsis and John Guare's accompanying essay. So given the popularity of our websale, we've extended it another month, so that customers can continue to enjoy the whole package for the cost of a digital download."
The intimate chamber musical has a score by Adding Machine: The Musical composer Schmidt and lyrics by Tranen. Tony-nominated actor and director Austin Pendleton, who also wrote Orson's Shadow and Uncle Bob, penned the adaptation based on the 1898 version of George Bernard Shaw's Candida.
The cast album preserves the performances of Tony Award nominees Bobby Steggert (Ragtime, The Grand Manner) and Marc Kudisch (9 to 5, The Apple Tree) and Jeff Award-winning Chicago actress Kate Fry (Oh Coward!), as well as Liz Baltes and Drew Gehling.
A Minister's Wife debuted at the Writer's Theatre in Glencoe, IL, in May 2009. Writer's Theatre artistic director Michael Halberstam, who conceived the production and staged the premiere, directed the Lincoln Center Theater production, which ran April 7-June 12 in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. The CD comes with a 28-page full-color booklet complete with synopsis, lyrics, production photos and an essay by John Guare.
The track listing for A Minister's Wife follows:
1. A Fine October Morning
2. Sermon
3. "The Hoxton Freedom Group..."
4. Candida's Coming Home
5. Enchantment
6. In Response
7. "Stagger me, my boy..."
The First Preaching Match:
8. The Love of a Fool
9. Kingdom of Heaven
10. Is It Like This for Her Here Always?
11. Shy, Shy, Shy
12. Isn’t He Foolish?
13. Shallops and Scrubbing Brushes
14. Off to the Guild of St. Matthew
15. At the Gate of Heaven
16. Candida, Candida!
17. "The man Candida married..." 18. The Second Preaching Match
19. Champagne
20. "I am to choose, am I?..."
21. The Bids for Candida
22. Spoiled from the Cradle
23. Into the Night
The musical, according to Lincoln Center Theater, "explores the fires burning beneath the surface of a seemingly ordinary marriage. The Revered James Morell (Kudisch) and his wife, Candida (Fry), are happily married – or at least they think – until a romantic young poet (Steggert) enters their life."
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 Kate Baldwin, Maureen McGovern, Victoria Clark, Jessica Molaskey and Christine Andreas; and recordings drawn from rare sound archives, including "Sondheim Sings." The company also announced plans to record the current Broadway revival of Follies.
Visit the label's website, PSClassics.com.
