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

Tuesday, September 9 will be a big day for Ghostlight!

We’re happy to finally announce that on the 9th we’ll be releasing both the World Premiere Recording of Michael John LaChiusa’s Little Fish, featuring Alice Ripley, Greg Jbara, Chad Kimball, Brooke Tansley and Robert Torti, AND the newest album from worldwide jazz sensation Lea DeLaria, entitled The Live Smoke Sessions.

Email littlefish@sh-k-boom.com and/or smokesessions@sh-k-boom.com and we’ll add you to the list to be alerted when these titles are available for pre-order on our site.

It has been a big week at Ghostlight!

We are proud to announce that the Original Cast Recording for ‘IN THE HEIGHTS‘ will debut at #1 on BILLBOARD’S Cast Album Chart. The double-CD also made it onto Billboard’s TOP 200 ALBUM Chart, entering at #82.

In other chart news, Ghostlight’s OCR for Legally Blonde jumped to #5 on Billboard’s Cast Album chart, more than doubling its sales from the previous week – the result of MTV’s new program Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search For Elle Woods. And Ghostlight’s Passing Strange OCR charts at #14, even with its digital-only availability. Brick and Mortar release for Passing Strange is July 15th.

USA Today’s Elysa Gardner interviews both Kelli O’Hara on her new Ghostlight album, Wonder in the World, and Sutton Foster about her upcoming Ghostlight album, Wish, in her new article, “Broadway’s big voices have big hopes for recording careers.”

Read it here!

Pre-Order Here.

Plus! COMBO SALE! Buy In the Heights & Passing Strange Together for Just $27.99

The live Original Broadway Cast Recording of Passing Strange is now available for download on iTunes! to be taken to the Passing Strange page in Apple’s online store to get the full album or to download your favorite tracks. (But truly, we don’t know how you could choose!)

Or are you already listening to it on a loop like us?! If so, make sure to leave a review on iTunes and let others know how wonderful it is.

We decided to release the album to iTunes first to get the music out to you faster, but CDs are on their way! If you’d prefer to have the album in your hands, the release date has been set for July 15. Stay tuned and we’ll let you know when it’s available to pre-order through Sh-K-Boom.com.

Could it be that MTV has finally caught on to how good Broadway can be? Check out the MTV news article on Passing Strange and In the Heights.

Rock seems to have had an easier transition to the Broadway stage than hip-hop, but that’s changing with “In the Heights,” which led the 2008 Tony Award nominations with 13 nods. “It surprises me that no one has put hip-hop and Latin music into a Broadway musical before me,” “Heights” composer/narrator Lin-Manuel Miranda said. “We really tried to use the music of Washington Heights — salsa, reggaeton, hip-hop — and we use it to tell a story.”

“I think the theater needs rappers and rock bands and techno and everything,” Stew said. “The theater needs every actual music that’s actually happening in the world, you know? Because the audience for the new musical, they’re out there. They listen to music all the time. We live in a music-obsessed society, you know? Stuff like us or ‘Spring Awakening,’ it shouldn’t be an aberration. It shouldn’t be strange. It should be normal.”

World Premiere Music Video Previews Latin/Salsa/Hip-Hop-Infused Original Broadway Cast Recording for “In The Heights”

A World Premiere video for showstopper ‘96,000′ serves as a dynamic preview of the ‘In The Heights’ Original Broadway Cast recording. Nominated for 13 TONY Awards — including Best Musical and Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) — ‘In The Heights’ features Latin, Salsa and Hip-Hop-infused music, conceived and written by emerging superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda. Ghostlight Records will release the OCR on June 3rd, as a 23-track, two-CD package, complete with a 68-page booklet containing cast photos and song lyrics. The exclusive video was shot by Broadway.com.

Here is Broadway.com’s Exclusive video for “96,000″

Footage for the Behind-the-Scenes video was shot at the actual recording sessions for the OCR, on March 23rd and 24th in New York City. The double album was produced by Andres Levin (proclaimed”the master chef of Urban fusion” by The LA Times,) and by Ghostlight President Kurt Deutsch.

Pre-order IN THE HEIGHTS OBCR here!

“The American Theatre Wing and XM Satellite Radio proudly present an interview with actress Sherie Rene Scott, on their weekly theatrical interview show, “Downstage Center,” on XM’s On Broadway (XM Channel 28).

Scott will appear as the special guest on Friday, May 16 at 6 p.m. The show will repeat on Saturday, May 17 at noon, Sunday, May 18 at 7 p.m., and Wednesday, May 21 at midnight (all times eastern; transmission is simultaneous across the country). The program becomes available as streaming audio and podcast from www.americantheatrewing.org and iTunes beginning Monday afternoon, May 19.”

Read the full story here: http://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=27944

Tune in to Sirius over the next few days to hear Tony-winner Christine Ebersole (Grey Gardens & 42nd Street) as she spends time with Seth Rudetsky on his weekly show Seth Rudetsky’s Studio A Cabaret and chats about her latest album, Sunday in New York. Go to Sirius.com for more info.

The piece will air:
Fri 5/15 7:00pm ET
Sat 5/17 3:00 pm ET
Sun 5/18 12:00 pm ET
Weds 5/21 5:00 pm ET

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.