Elizabeth Swados - The Liz Swados Project (2020) [Hi-Res]

The Liz Swados Project – a newly-recorded tribute album to the visionary artist – features an epic tribe of diverse performers, composers and lyricists, who have been influenced and inspired by Elizabeth Swados as a performer, composer, lyricist, teacher, and trailblazer. The all-star cast of luminaries from Broadway, downtown and beyond, including vocalists Starr Busby, Sophia Anne Caruso, Damon Daunno, Amber Gray, Stephanie Hsu, Jo Lampert, Alicia Olatuja, Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Grace McLean, and Ali Stroker, in addition to songwriter/performers The Bengsons, Heather Christian, Michael R. Jackson, Taylor Mac, Dave Malloy, Shaina Taub, and the late Michael Friedman, among others. The album – featuring the world premiere recordings of 14 songs – is produced by Lauren Fitzgerald, Kris Kukul and Matt Stine, with Kurt Deutsch and Roz Lichter serving as executive producers. Kris Kukul, Ms. Swados’s longtime music director, provides orchestrations and arrangements.

The Liz Swados Project celebrates the Swados legacy with songs from 10 of her works for the stage sung by some of the most influential performers and composers in theater today. In the words of the late Michael Friedman, who studied under Swados, "Liz is in the DNA of my work." You can hear her influence in the work of this new generation of theatrical music makers, all of whom honor her with their recordings of her songs.

Each artist performs a selection in their unique style, ranging from Vaudeville-tinged chamber pop, contemporary blues, and haunting art songs, to raw indie rock, spare classical ballads and sweeping middle Eastern-inspired choral pieces.


Works are featured from her landmark Broadway hit Runaways (1978), about the lives of children who run away from home and live on city streets, including a performance by Sophia Anne Caruso, who appeared in the show at New York City Center’s Encores! Off-Center series in 2016. Selections also come from Swados’ little-known masterpiece The Beautiful Lady (1984), a deeply felt meditation on the triumph and catastrophe of the Russian avant-garde; Alice in Concert, her 1981 Public Theater production which updates Alice in Wonderland, originally featuring Meryl Streep and Debbie Allen; Nightclub Cantata, the revue which became a downtown sensation in 1977, and other pieces throughout the decades. Swados herself is represented on the album, performing her composition "Bird Lament," echoing the natural world with guitar and colorful vocal sounds. Her work was featured on a 2017 concert evening for Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series; Michael Friedman’s live performance of "Things I Didn’t Know I Loved" from that special show provides the fitting closing track for the album.

Swados, praised by The New York Times for her "unique style of socially engaged musical theater," introduced new forms to the genre – world, folk, rap and experimental music – and wrote of topics not usually seen in musical theater: racism, murder and mental illness. She defied "downtown" categorization, with her work performed at La MaMa ETC, The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall and Broadway, as well as cabarets, rock clubs, churches and synagogues around the U.S. and Europe. Swados is the only person to have been nominated for five Tony Awards in one season, for Best Musical, Direction, Score, Book, and Choreography. As Hilton Als wrote in her obituary in The New Yorker, "(Swados) was born talented and she stayed talented, her eyes always wide with the expectation that something amazing was about to happen—and if it didn’t, she’d make it herself."

"I just remember Elizabeth as a person with an inexhaustible creative energy. The voice that emerged – unique, female, eternally young and tied to childhood – has not been duplicated in the theater." – Meryl Streep

Tracklist:
01. Heather Christian - We Are Not Strangers (2:37)
02. Dave Malloy - Every Now and Then (3:11)
03. Amber Gray - Oh, King Daddy (3:00)
04. Taylor Mac - The Red Queen (2:24)
05. Stephanie Hsu - In This My Green World (2:53)
06. Ali Stroker - Take Me to Paris (2:23)
07. Jo Lampert - Souf (2:51)
08. Alicia Olatuja - You Gave Me Love (3:42)
09. Shaina Taub - You Do Not Have to Be Good (2:09)
10. Sophia Anne Caruso - Song of a Child Prostitute (2:26)
11. The Bengsons - The Dance (3:50)
12. Ashley Pérez Flanagan - Salvador (1:53)
13. Damon Daunno - Isadora (2:54)
14. Michael R. Jackson - Lonesome of the Road (3:21)
15. Grace McLean - War Gets Old (3:02)
16. Starr Busby - A Change Shall Come (3:21)
17. Elizabeth Swados - Bird Lament (2:43)
18. Liz Swados Project Choir - Amen (1:43)
19. Michael Friedman - Things I Didn't Know I Loved (Live) (3:07)