"Art is, I think, one of the few forces in the world that, lovingly, can change your life -- in an instant -- forever. When you're in this moment of discovery it's this euphoric, beautiful place to be because there's a kind of spiritual language that's communicated in art from an artist to an audience when the stars are in syzygy and everything is all right." YouTube playlist // Spotify playlist // My Stokes Song Wishlist // My Show Recaps // Email me Profile picture art by Andrea C. White
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Brian Stokes Mitchell sings “Back to Before” at Broadway Miscast 2026
Brian Stokes Mitchell sings “Back to Before,” Mother’s song from Ragtime, at Miscast26 at MCC Theater on April 27, 2026. The program will be streamed on May 12, 2026 (x).
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John Williams: Music from “My Fair Lady” featuring Brian Stokes Mitchell and Dianne Reeves, 2005
Composer, conductor and arranger John Williams gives a jazz twist to Lerner and Loewe's classic Broadway score for My Fair Lady. Featuring s
On December 4, 2005 the Disney Concert Hall presented: Music from My Fair Lady arranged and conducted by John Williams and featuring Brian Stokes Mitchell and Dianne Reeves. The program was later aired on NPR on “Discoveries at Disney Concert Hall” hosted by Renee Montagne.
Brian Stokes Mitchell featured in the November 2025 issue of Town & Country magazine's cover story on Broadway philanthropy
Brian Stokes Mitchell featured in the November 2025 issue of Town & Country magazine's cover story on Broadway philanthropy along with Jonathan Groff, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Celia Keenan-Bolger and John Leguizamo (x)
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DISCLAIMER: I have no technical musical knowledge beyond just being a massive fan of music. I can't read music, I don't play an instrument or sing, I have no idea how to tell anything about key or pitch by ear or what any of the terms mean without looking them up. So, like if any of these don't make sense because of some musical technicality ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm including links to the Stokes performance if he's sung it but there's no good quality video/recording, otherwise the links are to the version of the song that gave me the idea.
Send me your recs and ideas, I'll keep updating and sharing. Last update: 3/19/25.
"Here I'll Stay" (x) and "Love Song" (x) i'm adding these in honor of Stokes being announced in Love Life at New York City Center. the link is to a version by Sammy Davis, Jr. that is just *chef's kiss*
"What'll I Do" (x) the link is to the Nat King Cole version, but I just heard this song on the British Cop show called Ridley. He's a retired cop that owns a jazz club and moonlights as a singer there. This might seem an outlandish place to find a Stokes song, but seeing that I just saw the actor Adrian Dunbar in a trailer for a filmed stage version of Kiss Me Kate ! I think it's okay :)
"La Vie En Rose" (x): submitted by PC :)
"The Raven" by Potliquor (x) ok hear me out guys: I found this song when I was making a fanmix years ago for the Doctor Who episode "Face the Raven," I know that is too much information, but I just want you to know how big of a nerd I am. Also, my grandmother used to just randomly start dramatically reciting Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and once she started she would just do the whole thing, so I guess being a big nerd runs in the family. Anyway, this song is so dramatic™ I feel like I can easily picture it having a Broadway arrangement complete with Stokes song-acting.
“I Am What I Am” from La Cage Aux Folles (x) (x) Listen I’m still sort of a Broadway newbie and I just became aware of this song, but I deeply need to hear Stokes to sing this with his song-acting
"Cheering for Me Now" from New York, New York/Hamildrop (x) (x) always loved this song since it came out as a Hamildrop, but i just saw this show on Broadway (plot twist: Stokes was actually in the audience the night we attended !) and I can't stop imagining him singing it :))
“First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (x) Johnny Cash edition. Yes, that link is to a Random Harvest fan vid because it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, go watch that movie lads
"Waters of March" (x) update: I just got to see him sing this at 54 Below, and it just made me want a high quality album version so much more, but enjoy the video I took <3
"I've Never Been in Love Before" from Guys and Dolls (x)
"You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel (x)
"The Way You Look Tonight" (x) (x)
"Dancing in the Dark" from The Band Wagon (x) (x)
"Dream" from Daddy Long Legs (x)
Okay, how about any or all of the Fred Astaire/Oscar Peterson collaboration album The Astaire Story (x)
Any/all of the songs in this medley from one of his 54Below Diamond Series shows: "The Very Thought of You," "Embraceable You," "They Can't Take That Away From Me" (x)
“Nevertheless” from Three Little Words (x)
"I've Got to Find a Reason" and "Her Face" from Carnival (x) (x)
"Goodnight My Someone" from The Music Man (x) (x): I can totally picture Stokes singing this all Prof-Harold-Hill-grows-a-conscience-like
"I'm Beginning to See the Light" and "Lush Life" (x) (x): Stokes sang these at Boston Pops in June 2022
"Sky Blue and Black" (x) (x) (x) and "Love Needs a Heart" (x) (x) by Jackson Browne
"Little Willow" (x): submitted by PC :)
“Nature Boy” (x) (x)
“Over the Rainbow” with the intro (x) (x)
"As Time Goes By" (x)
"September Song" (x) this Platters version soars a little more
"You Don't Know Me" (x)
"Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer" (x): it's just got those Wizard Every Day vibes what can I say
and maybe like ALL the Christmas songs but especially this song: (my grandmother used to sing us this song called "Christmas Chimes" that she told us a boy at her grammar school in New Haven wrote for the Christmas pageant back in the 30s or 40s. It's so pretty and I've never ever heard it anywhere else. It's sort of like 'The Christmas Song'-type about home and memories. I have a video of her singing it ❤ and if you are actual Brian Stokes Mitchell you can have it lol)
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Videos from Sixthman's Broadway Cruise 3, March 31-April 3, 2025 on the Norwegian Gem. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Sixthman or Norw
New Stokes performance videos posted on YouTube by a fan from the Broadway Cruise 3, March/April 2025 (x). Videos include "Make Them Hear You," "Wheels of a Dream," "The Impossible Dream," "Getting Married Today," "Stars," "Man of La Mancha," and "If Ever I Would Leave You."
My RECAP: Love Life at New York City Center, March 26th and 29th, 2025
Last week was pretty magical for me. I got to see Brian Stokes Mitchell on stage in a musical for the very first time. Ever since coming across his work and starting this research project in 2021 I've sort of had a dream in the back of my mind that someday I might get to see him do what he does. All those credits on his cv that get mentioned all the time, those are just cast albums and photos and grainy videos to me. [Side note: When I saw New York City Center's production of Ragtime last November, I finally got to experience the story and the dialogue and the staging, and there were parts of that show that were brand new to me. It felt so mind-expanding to finally see the whole thing and imagine more fully what it would have been like to see Stokes and the original cast]. Yes, I've been fortunate enough to see Stokes perform in concert many times now and he always acts out the songs from the shows and gives 110% every single time, but seeing the actual show is just different. So, I'll say it again, this was a magical week for me. And as you'll see from the headline, yes, i went twice in the interest of greater Stokes awareness. I got to experience the show up-close in the third row with my best friend on opening night and then a few days later I did my first ever solo New York City trip and sat in the mezzanine for the matinee. ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ
This whole experience was a huge deal in my world and getting to research the history of this show and revisit the 2020 content and watch the new content come out in real-time was super exciting.
The history of the show
The show was Love Life by Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner, originally on Broadway in 1948/49, it's one of those famously lost-to-time musicals. There was no cast album because of a musicians strike and no songs from the show were recorded by popular artists of the day because of an ASCAP boycott. But the musical has been cited as an influence by Hal Prince, Kandor and Ebb, Bob Fosse, and Stephen Sondheim and is considered one of the first concept musicals. The plot follows Samuel and Susan Cooper and their two children through 200+ years of American history, from 1791 to the present day as they navigate the industrial revolution, women's voting rights, and the changing landscape of chasing the American dream. The family never ages. Between the family's journey through the years, there are vaudeville numbers performed by the chorus that comment on the changing times and give socio-political context to the plot.
This new production was the first time the show had a major New York production in more than 75 years. New York City Center had planned to put on the show back in March of 2020, but the whole world shut down due to the Covid pandemic on the day of their first run-through. Most of the original cast slated to appear in 2020 returned for the 2025 edition, including Stokes, who wasn't originally set to return, but replaced Nicholas Christopher about a month before the run. And all of the creatives returned including Victoria Clark (director), Rob Berman (musical director), JoAnn Hunter (choreographer), and Jack Viertel (artistic director of Encores! through 2020).
You can read all about the history of the show and find lots of interesting information, including a mini-documentary and rehearsal clips from the 2020 and 2025 productions in my collection post (x).
A strange little show made especially for a classic movie nerd
I think it was really helpful to have a solid footing in classic movies going into this show because it had a very old-timey, cinematic feeling, and I felt right at home in the way the story was told and the oddness of it all. It reminded me of movies like The Enchanted Cottage, Lost Horizon, and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, just really odd, old movies that might not be my favorites of all-time but have stuck with me through the years. Plus lots of classic movie musicals are set in vaudeville times or have disjointed, revue-like numbers in their show-within-a-show, but where the old, movie musicals are just showcasing a composer's body of work with little reasoning behind it, Love Life's interstitial vaudeville numbers comment on the times and give context to the outside forces the characters are facing. The movies that comes straight to mind are Summer Stock and The Band Wagon, when they show the actual songs from the show they're putting on I always think what could the story of this show possibly be lol. Anyway, all of that classic movie weirdness lives inside me, so I was right at home with the oddness and commentary of Love Life.
The themes of the show
Love Life examines the effects of what capitalism does to love and relationships and joy, how it makes us humans choose money or love or forces us to sacrifice the comforts of those foundational things in order to give all our energies to the grind. And how in time we might come to confuse those goals and aspirations with what's really important in life.
The first setting is 1791 as Samuel Cooper and his family move to Mayville, CT to open a furniture store. Once the town accepts them and they begin to settle down, Sam and Susan ponder their new circumstances. Their relationship is strong at the beginning of the play and their family is secure and at peace in their new circumstances. Sam sings "Susan this is all I'm searching for / A place to live with you forevermore / A sign that says it's Samuel Cooper's store / There's no other world awaiting me / That meadow is as far as I can see / My heaven is no higher than that tree." Sam and Susan then duet on the song "Here I'll Stay" which is a dreamy song that actually foreshadows all the troubles that they encounter as they travel through history. "For that land is a sandy illusion, it's the theme of a dream gone astray," the big dreams of freedom and independence quickly get overwhelmed by the all-consuming, forced participation in capitalism. The characters know this at the beginning and they still can't save themselves from getting caught in the wheel of progress.
From there, Sam gets caught up in assembly-line factory work, railroad expansion, real estate schemes, and an advertising agency. He gets further and further away from building things with his hands as he tries to make money. Susan experiences independence and then disillusionment as she moves through the ages; and the children begin to center their parents in their lives less and less. They do stay young children throughout though, so their journey is more evocative of what the changing technologies have done to our free time. They gleefully run off to go look at a covered wagon in 1791, but in 1948 they all go their separate ways to pursue the radio shows and movies of the time. Through all of these changes for the family, the vaudeville acts sing about "Progress" and "Economics."
"But nobody hears me, what I say"
In the mini-documentary made after the 2020 show was cancelled, director Victoria Clark mentions that the song "Love Song" performed by the Hobo character as one of the vaudeville numbers is the thesis statement of the show. And that resonates so much with how I feel about the show. The song falls between 1894 and 1927, with Susan going from fiery suffragette to disillusioned flapper, and Sam going from worn out railroad man back to the grind, this time pandering to rich men's real estate interests. "Love Song" kind of summarizes what we've seen to this point and gives us the blueprints for how this deteriorating relationship might find a new footing. It was really beautifully sung by John Edwards and I really hope Stokes records it someday. I'd never heard it before and it's just really pretty.
Other highlights for me were basically all of the songs Stokes sang, including "Who is Samuel Cooper," "Here I'll Stay," "I Remember It Well," "My Kind of Night," "I'm Your Man," and "This is the Life." The main character energy was a blast to see. And Kate Baldwin was so fun as Susan Cooper and she had two songs that I especially loved "Is It Him or Is It Me" and "Mr. Right."
My absolute favorite parts were the short intro to "Here I'll Stay" referenced above and the short lines reprised from "Love Song" that Sam sings to Susan before the final scene, "Susan I want to hear a true song / Susan I need to hear a true song / One song that sings about forevermore.."
As I've found with most shows I've been fortunate enough to see, Act 2 moved a lot faster than Act 1. The line between the family scenes and the vaudeville scenes started to blur until Sam and Susan found themselves trapped in a vaudeville illusion act. They had to take a metaphorical leap of faith to find their way back to each other in the form of a tight-rope act. They slowly walk towards each other at the back of the stage, saying I love yous and realizing that they will always be family no matter what form their relationship takes. As they get closer, they reach out to each other as the music swells and the lights go dark before their hands touch. Like I said, real classic movie shenanigans (affectionate) right there.
Magical realism? In this economy?
I fully understand that the fact that the main characters don't age is a bit of magical realism, something you're not meant to question too deeply. Something that's there to emphasize the statements about capitalism and relationships that the piece is making. But I'm just a simple nerd thinking about simple nerd things like how immortality can read like time travel. Anyway, I have a theory. I think the townspeople in Mayville, CT where they first settle down put a little spell on them, a bit of a Brigadoon situation if you will. Once they welcome the family to the town, the chorus sings these lines: "May you live among us till rains no longer fall [...] Yes, may you dwell among us till oceans roll no more." This makes the sci-fi nerd in me very happy and I don't care if it doesn't make sense.
Stokes buries the lede in the program
Stokes's bio in the program just casually mentions that his "three solo albums will be re-released this year with two new ones on the way." This is huge news! I felt giddy reading that tidbit and I can't wait to hear new music from my favorite sunshine baritone. But also, why did I need to travel to New York City and read this playbill to find out lol. Anyway, here's a picture of the bio because how is this the best, most wholesome bio of all-time?
Overall, I really enjoyed the show both times. It was so exciting to see Stokes on the stage and his voice sounded amazing. The whole cast was wonderful and I just found myself in awe of everyone coming together in such a short time to put on this piece of Broadway history. Learning about the history of the show and attending the talkback after the Saturday matinee was so worthwhile. For more info on the show, the history, and for clips, interviews, and behind the scenes stuff, check out my collection post (x).
