A Brain (2015 York Cast Recording)

Deluxe two CD edition. A "miracle" and "revelatory" is how New York Magazine greeted the 2015 New York City Center Encores Off-Center production of William Finn and James Lapine's A New Brain, starring Broadway, film and television star Jonathan Groff (Hamilton, Spring Awakening, Frozen, Glee), along with Christian Borle (Something Rotten), Ana Gasteyer (Saturday Night Live) and Aaron Lazar (A Little Night Music, The Light in the Piazza). Audiences and critics alike welcomed the opportunity to revisit this deeply personal show, largely neglected since it premiered in 1998, and this new production - featuring some canny rewrites by Finn and Lapine - seemed more moving and invigorating than ever before; as New York magazine put it, "sharpening and tightening" the show allows its main theme, "the responsibility we have to use ourselves fully," to emerge more clearly. The score by the Tony Award-winner comprises "madcap, hallucinatory production numbers and gorgeous, tender ballads" (amNY); "both eccentrically individual and universal, these songs evoke the original, piquant talent" (The New York Times) of the composer/lyricist. Now PS Classics has preserved the "starry and beautifully sung" (NY Daily News) production of this 95-minute, through-composed show in its entirety for the first time, in a deluxe double disc set.