Give My Regards to Broadway!

My favorite art form is music because of its ability to converge with pretty much every other form of art in existence.  My writing is always more affective when produced under the influence, whether it be Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Mozart, or Sister Hazel, Sara Bareilles, Christina Perri, Christian Kane, Adele, Wilco and The Decemberists.  Even boring movies become more interesting, visual art holds more depth and movement.  One of my favorite convergences is music with theater!  I LOVE Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Rogers & Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Roger Miller, Frank Wildhorn, Stephen Schwartz, and many other superbly talented composers.

Last night my dear friend and I immersed ourselves in a Downtown Salt Lake City summer tradition: the Concert in the Park series at the quaint Brigham Young Memorial Park. It was opening night and they started things off with a phenomenal performance of Broadway, Live!  I'm sorry to say that sometimes I'm disappointed by the quality of those singing Broadway songs.  They can be a little too grandiose or squeaky or arrogant for my taste, but sometimes they are perfect and last night I was blown away by how indescribably incredible each singer performed.  Two men and two women singing some of my favorite songs from some of my favorite musicals, and introducing me to a few with which I was unfamiliar.

I wish I could have recorded the whole thing to post here but they asked that no recordings be made.
So I'll just pull from youtube samples of some of the songs performed.

They opened with:

From there I forget the order, I didn't think to write them down until halfway through the show...oh well, you'll get the idea.  I wish you could have been there because it was a truly Enchanted Evening.

Some classics I adore:

 

And a couple new ones I love from hearing them once!

The most captivating songs were sung by a girl I have actually met a couple of times as she dated my dear friend for a while.  I hadn't heard her sing before and I must say she was spectacular!  I really wish I had a recording of her singing, especially this song from what she said was her dream role:

(...but! if I can't have her singing it, my dear Judy will do)

They sang some other songs: Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better (Annie Get Your Gun), Somewhere That's Green (Little Shop of Horrors), a song I can't remember from the musical version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Love is an Open Door (Frozen)...[I can't tell you how glad I was that it wasn't Let It Go] and a couple other songs I didn't recognize.

They ended with all four singing together:

Then an encore of The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha.

I'm so glad we went!  It was a splendid night of fantastic musical performance!

Now I'm craving to go see all these (and many others) on Broadway!  Or a local theater would work as well. *wink*