SH-K-BUZZ from Sh-K-Boom & Ghostlight Records

Three cheers for In the Heights and Passing Strange, which both pulled in several Tony nominations this morning, including both being recognized for their original musical scores!

We’re so proud to be releasing both cast albums in the next few weeks on Ghostlight Records. You can pre-order your In the Heights CD now and Passing Strange will be available for digital download on iTunes on May 27.

Check out each show’s total list of nominations:

IN THE HEIGHTS - 13 nominations
Best Musical
Best Original Score
Best Direction
Best Book
Best Orchestrations
Best Choreography
Best Scenic, Lighting & Costume Design
Best Sound Design
Best Lead Actor, Lin-Manuel Miranda
Best Featured Actress, Olga Merediz
Best Featured Actor, Robin de Jesus

PASSING STRANGE - 7 nominations
Best Musical
Best Original Score
Best Book
Best Orchestrations
Best Lead Actor, Stew
Best Featured Actress, de’Adre Aziza
Best Featured Actor, Daniel Breaker

Congrats also to Ghostlight solo artists Kelli O’Hara and Patti Lupone, who were both nominated in the Best Leading Actress in a Musical category for their performances in South Pacific and Gypsy.

For a full list of nominees, check out Broadway.com.

You can get your hands on the live cast album of Passing Strange on May 27th exclusively on iTunes, weeks before the CD will be available in stores in July! This is a first for both Broadway and Apple and we think there’s no better show and no better fans to test the waters on helping the Great White Way go digital.

Ghostlight President and Passing Strange album producer Kurt Deutsch says, “”We finished mastering the album yesterday, and wanted to get the music to fans as quickly as we could. With the technology that exists today, we’re able to do that.”

In case you missed it, the Original Cast Album of this celebrated production was recorded in front of a live audience, in a dynamic session on stage at the Belasco Theatre. Variety has more on this Broadway first, including more from Kurt.

Send us an email to be reminded when the full Passing Strange recording is available for download.

Be sure to check out the latest ‘Ask Playbill’ column, which focuses on recording cast albums! It it’s an extensive feature with great (if we do say so ourselves) input from our very own Kurt Deutsch, founder and President of Sh-K-Boom & Ghostlight Records.

Here’s an excerpt:

The leader during this process is the producer — the equivalent to the director in theatre. There’s also a recording engineer, who oversees a lot of the technical aspects of the recording session: making sure the studio is set up properly, making sure all the microphones work, and making sure the sound is being captured in the right way. (Deutsch serves as the producer on his albums but will often co-produce with the recording engineer.) Another job is the ProTools engineer, who makes sure the sound is being fed into the ProTools software in the correct way.

Read the full column here.

It was a good morning to be a Sh-K-Boom & Ghostlight artist! Nominations were just announced for the 2008 Drama Desk awards, and several of our shows and solo artists received nods for their work this year.

Passing Strange received a nod in the Best Musical category and Make Me a Song was recognized as one of the most Outstanding Revues of the year.

And three of the six nominees in the Outstanding Actress in a Musical category have recorded their solo albums with us! Congrats to Patti LuPone (Gypsy), Kelli O’Hara (South Pacific) and Alice Ripley (Next to Normal).

For a complete list of nominees, visit Playbill.com.

As a special thanks for being such loyal Sh-K-Boom & Ghostlight Records fans, you can now get all three of our spring titles — the two-disc set of Make Me a Song, Kelli O’Hara’s Wonder in the World and Christine Ebersole & Billy Stritch’s Sunday in New York — for just $49.99. As always, order with us and everything ships for free. Click the banner below to place your order:

Many thanks to Michael Portantiere for these awesome photos from last week’s Passing Strange recording, live on stage at the Belasco Theatre:

Thanks to All That Chat poster pgenre for the shout out on the chat board over at TalkinBroadway.com! He says…

Firstly, Sh-K-Boom rocks me amadeusly for shipping out Kelli O’Hara’s WONDER IN THE WORLD and Finn’s MAKE ME A SONG two weeks early… what a pleasant suprise it was to discover these discs in my mailbox on Monday! They are TRULY the best cast album company we have (shout outs to PS CLASSICS and KRITZERLAND as well!), recording shows that otherwise would most probably have fallen through the cracks. Their quality level is supreme… SEE WHAT I WANNA SEE and BERNARDA ALBA may be the best SOUNDING cast albums I have ever heard, the shows and performances themselves notwithstanding (though I adore those as well)…

He goes on to rave about Kelli’s new CD, which we certainly won’t argue with! Read the full post here.

We work hard not only to produce the best quality recordings possible, but also get them into your hands as fast as we can. Nice to know it’s being noticed! Many thanks to pgenre and all the other Sh-K-Fans out there.

-Katie (the Marketing guru)

Broadway.com has posted a great new video interview with Kelli O’Hara about her new Ghostlight album, Wonder in the World, including some footage of her recording session. Click on the Kelli collage to check it out:

News flash! Ghostlight Records artist David Yazbek will pen the lyrics for an upcoming Broadway musical about the great magician, Houdini. The new musical is scheduled to hit the Great White Way in spring 2010.

Read more on Broadway.com.

South Pacific star Kelli O’Hara’s debut solo CD is here! You can now place your order for Wonder in the World on Sh-K-Boom.com.

Kelli’s album features a mix of unexpected covers and pop songs, with several original songs, including a duet penned by and performed with her Pajama Game costar, Harry Connick Jr.

Click here to get your copy of Wonder in the World with free shipping.