Sondheim Forum

Sondheim => The Work => Topic started by: Meldince on Jul 03, 2017, 02:33 PM

Title: Sondheim on video
Post by: Meldince on Jul 03, 2017, 02:33 PM
While wandering merrily, merrily around the vast realms of YouTube this evening without any particular fixed agenda, I found two little gems which I had not known were recorded in any shape or form whatsoever. Which put me in mind that there must be a vast array of such gems out there which I simply couldn't get to or find, even if I had nothing to do for days or weeks except explore YouTube and the various other video posting sites out there, including libraries, archives, publicly available personal collections etc.

And so, my fellow Sondheimians, here I create the Sondheim video thread. Please feel free to post any and all Sondheim-related videos. I personally can never have enough of them. From the tiniest snippets to the full on 'Sweeney Todd' or 'Company - The Making Of The OBCR'  (capitals at your discretion), this is where to pt those links.

Obviously be aware of copyright - I personally am not terribly sure of exactly how this works but I'm going to go on the assumption that, given the vigilance generally shown by copyright holders and enforcers in policing online content, if it's out there, it's ok for us to put it in here.

Oh and those two gems I spoke of earlier...an audio recording (not great quality but still far better than no recording at all) of Dean Jones performing 'Happily ever after' (in Boston, I think) in the original production of 'Company' before it got to Broadway, and the original cast of 'Company' performing the opening number in a 1993 concert performance.


Dean Jones (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYUi80P5OYw)

And that revival performance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl6r2icmrYg)
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Chris L on Jul 03, 2017, 02:55 PM
RE: Copyrighted materials

As someone who has posted potentially actionable materials on YouTube (i.e., videos of concerts that I've been to, though never plays or musicals), I know that YouTube catches copyrighted materials and informs the rights holders that they've been uploaded. They then give the rights holders the option of monetizing the videos by having ads placed in them or having them taken down.

I've had, I think, two videos taken down (out of hundreds), though some others have had ads placed in them. Both of the ones that were taken down were by Steely Dan and even in their case I think they didn't touch incomplete pieces of a song performance, just the complete ones. Ergo, we can safely assume that if a video's on YouTube, it's there with the implicit blessings of whoever holds the copyright and if something should lose their implicit blessing, it will go away.

All of which is a long way of saying that it's fine to link to YouTube videos here, copyrighted or not. If they're taken down, the link will simply go to a page saying that the video is no longer available.
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Chris L on Jul 03, 2017, 03:02 PM
In the spirit of Kevin's post, here's one of my favorite Sondheim performances on YouTube, though not a live one, a version of "Marry Me a Little" recorded by Harry Nilsson for Hal Prince so he could give it to his wife Judy (a huge Nilsson fan) as a Christmas present.

"Marry Me a Little" by Harry Nilsson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5CWyZhlheM)
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Meldince on Jul 03, 2017, 03:08 PM
Quote from: Chris L on Jul 03, 2017, 03:02 PMIn the spirit of Kevin's post, here's one of my favorite Sondheim performances on YouTube, a version of "Marry Me a Little" recorded by Harry Nilsson for Hal Prince so he could give it to his wife Daisy (a huge Nilsson fan) as a birthday present.

"Marry Me a Little" by Harry Nilsson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5CWyZhlheM)

Instant result!
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Jul 03, 2017, 09:55 PM

Harold Prince's wife is Judy (Daisy is their daughter), and it was a Christmas present; at the end, Nilsson sings, "Merry Christmas, Judy! / And a happy New Year, too...".

http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2012/12/17/was-sondheims-marry-me-a-little-first-recorded-only-as-a-christmas-present/

[/pendantry]
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Bobster on Jul 03, 2017, 10:29 PM
Thank God there was no poll question "How many bootlegs do you have?" !!!   C:-)

Herewith is what I and others feel is THE Musical Theatre number.  Ever.
Lovingly put together by Deester (remember him?) with some help from yours truly, you already should know what this piece is for your enjoyment.

 :-*  :-*  :-*  :-*  :-*  :-*

"Who's That Woman" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgvoAr0_gt4)

Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Chris L on Jul 03, 2017, 11:47 PM
Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Jul 03, 2017, 09:55 PMHarold Prince's wife is Judy (Daisy is their daughter), and it was a Christmas present; at the end, Nilsson sings, "Merry Christmas, Judy! / And a happy New Year, too...".

http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2012/12/17/was-sondheims-marry-me-a-little-first-recorded-only-as-a-christmas-present/

[/pendantry]

Thank you, pedant Dave. ;) Once again, I really oughta do research before I post these things.
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Leighton on Jul 04, 2017, 12:44 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RvmHu3bxAY

I rather love this ... Caroline O'Connor doing The Story of Lucy and Jessie
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Bobster on Jul 07, 2017, 06:56 PM
Quote from: Leighton on Jul 04, 2017, 12:44 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RvmHu3bxAY

I rather love this ... Caroline O'Connor doing The Story of Lucy and Jessie

Just as wonderful in person.

Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Leighton on Jul 13, 2017, 12:07 PM
Has anyone seen The Seventh Floor episode of Madam Secretary?  The episode opens with most of the opening number from Company - it's lovely!
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Chris L on Jul 16, 2017, 01:00 AM
To test out our new video embedding feature, here's the entire 2013 HBO documentary Six by Sondheim from YouTube.

Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Gordonb on Jul 16, 2017, 02:58 AM
Quote from: Leighton on Jul 13, 2017, 12:07 PMHas anyone seen The Seventh Floor episode of Madam Secretary?  The episode opens with most of the opening number from Company - it's lovely!

Yes - unexpected indeed and the best part of a sadly flagging series .... used to love it but now I watch it and mostly nod off half way through, when I wake I ask Rey if it is worth watching again and he usually says "nah".
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Leighton on Jul 18, 2017, 03:09 PM
Quote from: Gordonb on Jul 16, 2017, 02:58 AM
Quote from: Leighton on Jul 13, 2017, 12:07 PMHas anyone seen The Seventh Floor episode of Madam Secretary?  The episode opens with most of the opening number from Company - it's lovely!

Yes - unexpected indeed and the best part of a sadly flagging series .... used to love it but now I watch it and mostly nod off half way through, when I wake I ask Rey if it is worth watching again and he usually says "nah".

I quite enjoyed the trio of staffers singing on MSec's behalf last season.

It is definitely fairly mindless; I tend to half-watch whilst marking, or checking the internet
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Jul 18, 2017, 06:48 PM
Multitask through it if you must, but for the sake of my job security -- keep tuning in!!     ;D

I had heard through the grapevine, sometime in March when we began work on Ep. 321, that Blake would awaken to the strains of Company at the top of the episodeBut when it aired in May, I tuned in just a hair late -- less than a minute! -- by which time he'd already finished his morning routine, gone for a run, fed the cat and arrived at the bakery (now free of underscoring) to pick up breakfast goodies for MSec and the staff.

Apparently that all happened while I was fumbling with the remote.  So I didn't realize until just now, finally catching those opening 45 seconds for the first time (on Netflix (https://www.netflix.com/watch/80190563)) that they'd apparently eighty-sixed the original idea of giving Blake and his cat matching big-and-little breakfast bowls, both of which I had "lightly aged" for the prop department.  I guess the opening shot, panning across his meticulously-laid-out clothes and shoes (before settling on the clock on his nightstand), accomplishes the same thing in a somewhat less cutesy manner.

In any case, the face he makes at his 4:30am alarm certainly struck a chord; mine goes off at the same time, without even allowing for a jog (or a pet).  Going into S4, I still marvel at how this job has managed to make me keep almost abnormally-normal grownup hours.
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Gordonb on Jul 19, 2017, 09:09 AM
Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Jul 18, 2017, 06:48 PMMultitask through it if you must, but for the sake of my job security -- keep tuning in!!     ;D

I had heard through the grapevine, sometime in March when we began work on Ep. 321, that Blake would awaken to the strains of Company at the top of the episode.  But when it aired in May, I tuned in just a hair late -- less than a minute! -- by which time he'd already finished his morning routine, gone for a run, fed the cat and arrived at the bakery (now free of underscoring) to pick up breakfast goodies for MSec and the staff.

Apparently that all happened while I was fumbling with the remote.  So I didn't realize until just now, finally catching those opening 45 seconds for the first time (on Netflix (https://www.netflix.com/watch/80190563)) that they'd apparently eighty-sixed the original idea of giving Blake and his cat matching big-and-little breakfast bowls, both of which I had "lightly aged" for the prop department.  I guess the opening shot, panning across his meticulously-laid-out clothes and shoes (before settling on the clock on his nightstand), accomplishes the same thing in a somewhat less cutesy manner.

In any case, the face he makes at his 4:30am alarm certainly struck a chord; mine goes off at the same time, without even allowing for a jog (or a pet).  Going into S4, I still marvel at how this job has managed to make me keep almost abnormally-normal grownup hours.

I had missed/forgotten that you work on MSec - I will now watch with much greater interest. Do you get a credit? It's on tonight so I'll check anyhow.
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Leighton on Jul 19, 2017, 02:27 PM
I had no idea! 
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Jul 19, 2017, 05:23 PM
Quote from: Gordonb on Jul 19, 2017, 09:09 AMI had missed/forgotten that you work on MSec - I will now watch with much greater interest. Do you get a credit? It's on tonight so I'll check anyhow.
No credit, sadly.  Our crew head does get one, but we underlings remain nameless and unsung.  Screen credits are actually in surprisingly short supply in this business -- though you might not guess it from the endless crawls at the end of most films (even seemingly small ones).

With TV -- especially network television, as opposed to cable or streaming -- it's understandable: airtime is expensive.  Including every member of every crew in every department on our show would lengthen the credit list somewhere between five- and tenfold (at a rough guess, depending on the episode), meaning our 30-second end credits -- most of which already flash by too quickly to read -- would balloon to an interminable 2-to-5 minutes, practically begging viewers to switch channels.  Since  those few minutes would presumably come out of the show itself (not the commercials), several scenes, perhaps a subplot -- in one form or another, roughly 5-to-10% of the running time of each episode -- would have to be cut just to make way for a lengthy credit crawl that no one ever reads.

IMDb can sometimes be persuaded to include uncredited "roles," on- or offscreen, in their listings -- though they have to be labeled as such, which sorta dampens whatever cachet one might attach to such things.  I've never submitted any of my "uncredited credits" (which would be all of them, as far as painting for film and TV goes) -- judging by their detailed FAQ page on the subject, it seems like a potentially complicated process -- but one of these days I'll quit being lazy and give it a try.
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Chris L on Jul 24, 2017, 02:45 PM
@AmyG has added herself to the IMDB credits for movies where she worked on costumes. She can probably provide a tutorial on how to get yourself rightfully credited.
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: AmyG on Jul 24, 2017, 03:15 PM
Quote from: Chris L on Jul 24, 2017, 02:45 PM@AmyG has added herself to the IMDB credits for movies where she worked on costumes. She can probably provide a tutorial on how to get yourself rightfully credited.
I totally forget how I did it but I was listed in the credits on those movies. It's probably harder if you aren't. I also fixed my title on those that had it wrong. Here's my page (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2144420/?ref_=fn_al_nm_6). Some really arty stuff there. ::)
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: fjlumia on Jul 27, 2017, 10:19 AM
Youtube has so much Sondheim videos that one could spend days watching them.  There is a full version of Pacific Overtures.  There are multiple performances of various songs.  Judi Dench's Send in the Clowns from the 1990's revival is called the definitive version and it is.  She is wonderful. Stritch's Liasons is also available but the beginning is not great filming.  She has the lyrics down pat here.  There are also multiple versions of I'm still here.Gre

Of course Great Performances has Sunday/Park, Into the Woods, and A Little Night Music.  I have all 3.  The first 2 have original cast members and Night Music is a NYC Opera production with Sally Anne Howes and Regina Resnick.
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Jan 20, 2018, 07:58 PM
Random find, while down a YouTube rabbit-hole – this enjoyably hammy rendition of "Unworthy Of Your Love" by Ryan Scott Oliver and Lindsay Mendez:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QBudOVP9P0

More specifically: he's playing the straight man, she's casually gnawing down the set around them -- but they never sound less than lovely.  Except, perhaps, her pointedly toneless "...If that's what you want me to do."

I kid because I love; writing new roles for Mendez ought to be a cottage industry by now.  And mark my words: her Madame Rose, in a decade or two, will be a thing of shock and awe.
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Leighton on Jan 23, 2018, 12:16 PM
She is CHARMING
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Sep 03, 2018, 07:14 PM
Off-topic, here's more of the divine Ms. Mendez:

"Bless The Lord" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQRKm4w8GWk) (Godspell, B'way 2011)
"Hand In Hand" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt76Mf6yAEo)  (Kerrigan & Lowdermilk @54 Below, 2012)
"Pretty Funny" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJOGQ6lCZFY)  (Dogfight, Off B'way 2012)
"The Wizard And I" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_N75_earwY)  (Wicked, B'way 2013)
"Meadowlark" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHAPQsnzrrU)  (Mendez @54 Below, 2017)

And of course, her latest: unveiling a startlingly assured legit soprano in her Tony-winning performance in Carousel (which, sadly, closes in two weeks).  Audra McDonald likewise won her first Tony in this role, and while I didn't see her (except on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZp8QE-4tPk)), I have yet to hear anyone criticize Mendez's interpretation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTgjGE49SsI) by comparison with McDonald's -- a rare instance where the consensus actually celebrates both rather than taking sides.

And in the unlikely event that anyone should henceforth think to relegate Mendez to "backup (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh9FqPL8Mps)" ever again, Seth Rudetsky says don't:

"Mooning"/"Santa Claus Is Coming To Town"/"I Feel Pretty" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiNeY-GdrUw) (Rudetsky "Obsessed!", 2015)


Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: Leighton on Sep 05, 2018, 12:06 PM
This is utterly outrageous  :))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TppJMa8apkc 
Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Jun 16, 2020, 03:57 AM
I just came across this, from 2016:


I love the way the arrangement moves restlessly yet fluidly between the three songs, often adding new key shifts within a song, while remaining largely faithful -- and, even with the occasional deliberate change, always acutely sensitive -- to their original harmonic structures.  None of which could be called late-breaking innovation in the cabaret-medley genre; but this seems to me a particularly well-executed example of the form.

And in terms of their lyrics, it's a truly inspired mashup of some classic SJS preoccupations: I'd never before noticed the thematic affinities between these specific songs, but the title pretty much says it all ("The Road You Didn't Take / Growing Up / Move On").

Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Jun 16, 2020, 04:04 AM
And speaking of...


Apart from being a masterful performance, period, this strikes me as a brilliantly gauged one, all the more haunting for its simplicity and understatement.

I'm used to the more embattled middle-aged Ben of Follies proper (as established by McMartin in 1971 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTWezTaM2u0)), performing meticulously-curated self-satisfaction for Sally's benefit -- without ever being, himself, fully taken in by his own pose.  But in this 2010 birthday-concert performance, we're presented with a kind of subtly meta-textual Ben, four decades further on, who now seems more effortlessly convincing in (and convinced by) his own mellowness, no longer protesting-too-much, still formidably lucid and articulate but perhaps softened just a bit by age.  The flickers of doubt are rarer, tinier -- and twice as disconcerting to witness, when they do (just barely) surface.

Partly this is an artifact of casting: similarly to the way in which Prince cast the original production, the simple fact of having McMartin sing this song again at 80 brings a whole set of associations to our perception of his performance.  But it seems to me that at certain moments he's also using his age -- the formerly rich baritone gone reedy, the patrician features now gaunt and milky -- to shrewd effect.  Instead of a forty-year-old's barely-sublimated rage at life's inexorable passage, the older McMartin pares the character's underlying pain down to the merest whisper, a bewildering twinge, not wholly understood even as it's being revealed... and consequently all the more heartbreaking to watch.  His final note -- the voice almost shockingly feeble, the gaze stricken -- just devastates me.

Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Dec 22, 2021, 09:05 PM
Posted a couple weeks ago, here are six hours (!) of interviews conducted in 1997 by Mark Horowitz for the Music Division of the Library of Congress (which would result, five years later, in Horowitz's book Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0810874369)):


Title: Re: Sondheim on video
Post by: scenicdesign71 on Feb 07, 2022, 04:09 PM
...And here's a less exhaustive musicological overview, also posted in December:


It's an informative and entertaining hour featuring aptly-chosen musical excerpts (from SJS and various of his acknowledged influences, for illustration and comparison) as well as interview snippets (including several from the Horowitz tapes) and a trio of musicologists offering insightful commentary.