The Living was the Prize

cuz I've been listening to a lot of it lately:

Tie: Original Off-Broadway Cast (1971) / Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1973): I was tempted to be really edgy and rank the soundtrack first, but one can't deny the energy and charm of the OOBC. At the end of the day both are stellar casts without a weak link, and whether one prefers, like, Garber to Nathan or Alford to Jackson is entirely up to taste. The soundtrack has a fuller, more polished sound while the OOBC has a more electric energy in some songs, along with ofc the songs cut from the film, so ultimately there's some songs I prefer on the soundtrack and some on the OOBC*.

2000 Off-Broadway Cast (2000): Of all the re-dos and updates to the score, this is my favorite largely because it has a good ear for what to keep intact while giving it a bit more of a harder edge that you'd come to expect from a later recording. By far my favorite recording of "Tower of Babble", and a really solid front half, especially for the added dialogue passages. Stumbles more than a few times in the back--"We Beseech Thee" and "Beautiful City" are both fairly lackluster here.

Original London Cast (1971): A little worse of a recording than the OOBC, but with a strong cast including a very early in his career Jeremy Irons and a pre-Evita gathering of David Essex, Julie Covington and Marti Webb. The somewhat poor recording quality prevents this from ranking higher, but it's a solid time. I think Godspell sounds quite lovely with British voices.

2001 Touring Cast (2001): The one with re-arrangements from Alex Lacamoire, I don't think this one has dated quite as gracefully, but it's also the only radical reinventing of the score that I think works quite well, especially the tech-flavored "Babble". Shame about "Turn Back, O Man", though.

1993 Studio Cast (1997): A Jay Records recording with all that usually entails--an excellent recording quality, fidelity to the score, and almost always just dead in energy. This isn't so bad, but Darren Day is a deeply ineffectual Jesus that really sinks the early tracks, and Barrowman can go fuck himself. A surprisingly moving "Beautiful City", though.

2011 Broadway Cast (2011): The actual production of this was absolute crap, but separate from that the album isn't that bad. Its biggest issue is that it's one of the holy trinity along with You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Little Shop of Horrors of charming, low-rent Off-Broadway shows getting all gussied up and re-arranged for Broadway, with every song needing to be a big showstopper in some way. "Learn Your Lessons Well" is the biggest culprit here, along with the truly inexplicable "Turn Back, O Man" and the god-awful a cappella "Babble". Taken as arrangements qua arrangements, I'm quite fond of a few tracks--Prepare Ye, Save the People, Bless the Lord--and Uzo Aduba predictably kills it on By My Side. The Finale absolutely sinks it, with awful re-arrangements and added harmonies that do not do the material any favors. Not great.

If there's an English cast album you haven't seen here yet and it's a favorite of yours, go ahead! Put it here! Original Australian, South African, that weird 1972 London Studio recording that I can't find cast info on? They've got a spot on this list!

Foreign language Godspells? Original French? Original Swedish with a pre-Hooked on a Feeling Bjorn Skifs? Go ahead, put 'em here!

You remember all those random studio recordings of popular musicals that record companies turned out by the dozens in the 70s with session musicians and struggling singers? They all sound kinda the same and there's like a billion of them for Godspell? No worries, I guarantee they'll all fit here cuz nothing can be as bad as

An Original UK Cast Recording for the 90's (1994): No, I don't know why it markets itself like that, and no, I can't explain the random pixelated Genie on the cover art. Apparently this is an album for the UK touring cast in 1994, and apparently that actual production did not use any of the arrangements heard on this album. Which. Thank fuck, because this is dreadful. Think of every sappy, cheesy cliche you can of 90s music--and mind you, we're not talking grunge or alternative rock here, we're talking fucking muzak--and they've got it in spades here. Not a single song works, "Babble" is ok enough to fool you into thinking maybe you'll have a decent times, and then "Prepare Ye" barges in with its inexplicable brass synth loop that they use three times in the damn album. Someone, somewhere, thought this was a good idea, and I hope he enjoys this album. For everyone else on the planet earth, stay far away.

For what it's worth:

Original Concept Album (1984): Briliant, lush, rocking, everything you want the show to be. The foundation upon which everything else is built, yet to be topped.

Chess på Svenska (2002): the only other album that sounds as lush as the concept album, with one of the all-time best casts assembled for the show. The changes are interesting, the new arrangements are fantastic, it's in Swedish but we can't all be perfect.

Original Broadway Cast (1988): the other all-time best cast assembled for the show. They don't get to shine as well here owing to a severely cut-down album with questionable mixing (it sounds better on vinyl), but the worst elements of the score changes are mitigated here and Kuhn's "Someone Else's Story" is unimpeachable.

2025 Broadway Cast (2026): this makes a lot of similar alterations and, well, frankly butcherings to the score as the OBC production did, but while that album mostly elided those this lays it all bare for you to hear. A mostly fine cast and a hella rocking band, but thinner orchestrations combined with an ensemble that can't balance both the pop and choral elements of the score.

2001 Danish Tour Cast (Complete Cast Album) (2001): On the one hand the most complete recording we have of the original London score (though it still trims a significant amount of music), on the other holy hell is this badly produced. Thin as hell in the mixing, tempos are all over the place (usually too slow), the energy is nowhere to be found. Band is hampered by the inexplicable decision to replace most of the synths with generic piano or string patches, and the cast is mostly good but dear god Varla is near unlistenable in some songs. Still has a handful of tracks that are genuinely great (my favorite "Interview" on official release, quite fond of "Arbiter", "Soviet Machine", and "Embassy Lament"), but largely a mixed affair.

Chess in Concert (Royal Albert Hall) (2008): lord help me. So take everything I've already said about the Danish album but now add in a bunch of extremely poor changes and revisions that make the score unilaterally worse (coupled with some baffling additional cuts on the album), combined with a recording that sounds even thinner despite being a full orchestra and choir, and one of the most hit and miss casts ever assembled for the show. Bedella, Ellis and Clarke are great, Groban, Pascal and Pellow are fine, and Menzel. Uh. Well. Hey I guess she hits 75% of the notes so she's succeeding!

Chess in Concert (Gothenburg) (1994): Laughably bad. Some standout tracks (Merano, Soviet Machine, Endgame) but largely not worth bothering with.

I have not seen 2025 Chess, and I listened to the KenCen script once eight years ago, so I only vaguely remember most of these changes lol.

My thoughts:

this overture is fucking lame lol. Imagine starting your overture in the year of our lord 2025 with a goddamn timpani roll

US vs. USSR still thuds as an opening number. If they were really going to commit to this as a choice it needed to be restructured or rearranged.

Nicholas Christopher seems to be falling down the same David Carroll trap of "a very good performance onstage that sounds like a Muppet on album"

cast is mostly fine tbh. I like Pinkham but everyone else is just. Sorta there? Not making a huge impression.

Guitarist Jakob Reinhardt and drummer Sean McDaniel are fucking killing it. Best tracks on the album are the rock tracks cuz of how hard those two fuck

I'd appreciate it a lot more if half these songs weren't cut to hell! I remember this being a thing in KenCen and it's irritating how the score just doesn't flow at all.

also god alive I wish they had gone back to first principles with the concept album instead of importing all the arrangement choices from RAH. So many of these are bad bad choices (Florence Quits vocal arrangement, Quartet, lots of lyric decisions)

the orchestral reduction mostly works, and there's some fun changes in the rock songs (hello, horn call during "Freddie's Entrance" from the concert productions my beloved). The bits they fall flat are the big orchestral swells like in Chess #1 and Anthem, alas.

synths sound a bit cheap tho. Not on the level of the concept album or OLC production.

Soviet Machine slaps

good lord they are adverse to including any dialogue in this. I pity the child trying to discern any kind of plot from this album

I forgot they added "He is a Man, He is a Child". Man it...does not sound like the rest of the score, does it. Nor does it sound like the rest of the lyrics.

Hey Reinhardt, McDaniel, do your backs hurt from single-handedly carrying this album

Svetlana's diction in her big Endgame solo was hilariously bad. WELLLLLIWONNNNNCRAAAAAAW

Worst crimes ever committed to "You and I" here. Dreadful. Someone take the Broadway lyrics out back and shoot them, please.

Can you really believe that of all the versions out there they took inspiration from the fucking US tour for this?

Love the final reprise of "Story of Chess" when we haven't fucking heard it anywhere else in the show

"All Started By a Mouse" - A Disney Medley

Hey all!

Back in January I was MD and arranger for a musical revue of songs from film, and for that I arranged a 6-minute medley of 24 Disney songs that was used as the entr'acte.

A friend of mine took the time to orchestrate it as a full orchestral piece, and it's been uploaded now to YouTube for your viewing pleasure, paired with some of the original concept art from the films represented in the medley.