Media Condition:Very Good Plus (VG+)
Sleeve Condition:Very Good Plus (VG+)

Notes:

CD Liner Notes:

“The dictionary defines elegy as a “song of mourning,” and we all know that we mourn people in a variety of ways. We cry, we laugh, we reflect; the most important thing we do is remember, so that the thing or person we mourn lives again.

The songs in William Finn’s beautiful song cycle “Elegies” are as varied as the act of mourning. Believe me, some of them are hilariously funny. The original title of the show was, in fact, Looking Up — reflecting the title of the last song as well as the spirit and buoyant optimism that runs through the entire piece.

Like any good 19th or early 20th century song cycle, “Elegies” evokes whole worlds and personalities through words and music. But the piece is innately theatrical — Finn is a theater writer, after all — and each song is like a wonderfully complete one-act play.

Furthermore, “Elegies” played in a real theater — Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse — not a concert hall or cabaret, and Graciela Daniele staged it for all its theatricality: the five singers moved and occasionally danced under vivid stage lighting. Because the piece initially played on Sunday and Monday nights, it was premiered on the set of “Observe the Sons of the Ulster Marching Towards the Somme,” the play that was on the regular Newhouse schedule. The poignant Irish play, with its chronicle of young soldiers on the eve of the bloodiest battle of the First World War, proved to be the perfect backdrop for Bill Finn’s equally poignant musical chronicle of the lives of the dead.

These songs reveal a maturity of Finn’s talent that should please and excite his many devoted fans. Every performance of “Elegies” at Lincoln Center Theater ends with a heartfelt standing ovation, and it is easy to see why. For one thing, the five performers you’ll hear on this CD, Christian Borle, Betty Buckley, Carolee Carmello, Keith Byron Kirk and Michael Rupert were as good as it gets. The songs they sang were never cheaply sentimental, never tear-jerkers. They were simply a songwriter’s response to notable people in his life. And life, not death, is the key word. “The living was the prize, the ending’s not the story” is a lyric from one of the evening’s final songs: a fitting way to describe the latest offering from one of the American theater’s true originals.”

-Andre Bishop
Artistic Director, Lincoln Center Theater
May 21, 2003

1. Looking Up Quintet
2. Mister Choi & Madame G
3. Mark’s All-Male Thanksgiving
4. Only One
5. Joe Papp
6. Peggy Hewitt & Mysty Del Giorno
7. Passover
8. Infinite Joy
9. The Ballad Of Jack Eric Williams (And Other 3-Named Composers)
10. Monica And Mark
11. Anytime (I Am There)
12. My Dogs
13. Venice
14. 14 Dwight Ave., Natick, Massachusetts
15. When The Earth Stopped Turning
16. Goodbye / Boom Boom
17. Looking Up
18. Goodbye (Finale)

Barcode and Other Identifiers:

Barcode 0 30206 21892 3

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