| re: Jay Records "Complete" Recordings | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 07:24 pm EDT 06/15/20 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 07:11 pm EDT 06/15/20 | |
| In reply to: re: Jay Records "Complete" Recordings - Snowysdad 11:34 pm EDT 06/14/20 | |
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| I don't know what issue you have of the Acting Company production. Perhaps a highlights version was issued at one time. It looks like JAY issued a one-LP version back in the day as well as a two-LP version. In any case, the two-CD set features a 12-minute talk by John Houseman (originally issued on the two-LP release) along with a performance that runs approximately 79 minutes, slightly longer than the MGM recording, which is 78 minutes. So if anything is missing from the JAY recording of the Acting Company production, it's not much. There was also a complete recording, clocking in at 78 minutes, of a 1994 L.A. production. The 1964 Off-Broadway production was partly financed by Columbia, which contributed 15K of the 25K production cost. Columbia planned to make the cast recording of the production. Although the production was performed with only one piano, the recording was to be accompanied by orchestra, using Blitzstein's orchestrations, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who was billed as the musical consultant for the production. Bernstein had earlier conducted the orchestrated version in a 1947 City Center concert and the first few performances of the 1947 Broadway revival, which also used the orchestrations and which featured some of the cast of the City Center concert. He may have conducted it with orchestra some other times. Columbia and the cast of the 1964 production could not come to terms on payment for the recording. Equity decided that the cast should be paid either the standard Equity payment of one week's pay for a nine-hour call or the minimum AFTRA scale, whichever was higher. Columbia refused to accept the possibility of the AFTRA scale, saying that they feared it might set a precedent. George Avakian, the production's associate producer, paid the costs of making the recording, not knowing what company would release it or even if would be released. He hoped that Bernstein would be the pianist, but Columbia, which had Bernstein under contract, refused. Columbia was otherwise cooperative in various ways. I presume that Avakian, under the circumstances, did not feel secure enough to also pay for an orchestra, which certainly could have been conducted by Gershon Kingsley, the production's original pianist and musical director and an experienced conductor (although he ended up having to delay his departure for Israel, where he was to conduct How to Succeed, to play at the recording session). MGM picked up the recording. |
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