Music
See also: List of songs in On the RecordMusical numbers in On the Record are performed by the previously mentioned four principal characters, as well as a separate, unnamed quartet, and an eight-member orchestra. While the show is often advertised as a collection of 64 Disney songs, there are actually 71, with three of them reprised. Hardly any song, however, is performed in its entirety. Under the musical adaptation and arrangement by David Chase, songs also take different twists on their original counterparts from film or stage. "Be Our Guest" especially drifts from the original film version in that it is sung in a surplus of different languages. Julian sings a portion of the song in French, Diane sings in German, Kristen sings in Japanese, Nick sings in Swedish, and the company sings other portions in English and other languages. "The Work Song", however, hardly drifts from the original version at all, digitally altering the characters' voices to imitate those of Cinderella's mice.
The 75 years of Disney music represented in the revue dates back to "Minnie's Yoo-Hoo" from a 1929 Mickey Mouse short, with the newest selection being "Will the Sun Ever Shine Again" from the 2004 film Home on the Range. On the Record includes a total of eight Academy Award for Best Song winners: "When You Wish Upon a Star" from Pinocchio, "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South, "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid, "Beauty and the Beast" from Beauty and the Beast, "A Whole New World" from Aladdin, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" from The Lion King, "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas, and "You'll Be in My Heart" from Tarzan. The catalogue of music does not only come from the screen, however, but also from such Disneyland attractions as It's a Small World and The Enchanted Tiki Room, both with songs by Disney's prolific songwriter brother duo, Richard and Robert Sherman. Also performed in the musical is composer Alan Menken's "A Change in Me" — a song written for Toni Braxton when she entered the role of Belle in the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast.
The songs are grouped into 15 recording sessions, as well as a prologue, finale, and a collection of instrumentals played after curtain call as the audience exits the theater, with each section's songs holding a unifying theme. Some sessions contain themes such as falling in love, while others may contain songs made up of entirely nonsense words, or even numbers about foreign cuisine. More often than not, songs within a session are presented in the form of a medley, leading directly into one another, without a break between them.
Released to stores on March 15, 2005, the cast recording, featuring the entire original cast, excluding Emily Skinner and including Kaitlin Hopkins, received decent reviews. Produced by Walt Disney Records, the two-disc set with a total of 45 tracks was mostly acclaimed for the talent of the cast and the timelessness of the Disney favorites. Because the show contains very little dialogue, the two discs are essentially a recording of the entire show.
Read more about this topic: On The Record (musical)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“From where Pan’s cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The harp that once through Tara’s halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls As if that soul were fled.”
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)