Recording Broadway

';Grammy Awardwinning producer Shepard throws open the door to the recording booth in his exuberant and fine-grained debut memoir.... Broadway aficionados will find plenty to enjoy.' - Publishers WeeklyRECORDING BROADWAY: A LIFE IN CAST ALBUMS of the making of fifty-plus years' worth of show albums, featuring up-close-and-personal stories of his work with pretty much everyone who was anyone on Broadway, including Julie Andrews, Leonard Bernstein (';truly awesome but very complicated'), Sheldon Harnick (';as warm and decent as he was talented'), Barbara Cook (';one of my favorites'), Placido Domingo, Gregory Hines, John Kander, Fred Ebb, Danny Kaye, Angela Lansbury (';so gifted and so easy to be with and to work with'), Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Stephen Sondheim (';a genius, and very easily bruised'), Barbra Streisand (';as professional at 24 as any veteran I've ever worked with'), Andrew Lloyd Webber, and many more.Alongside this unforgettable saga is the tale of Shepard's childhood as a small-in-stature piano prodigy from East Orange, New Jersey, and his emergence into the world as a recording producer of, first, classical music and then Broadway cast recordings. Told with verve in Shepard's inimitable voice a striking combination of Broadway glitz and classical-music elegancehis journey makes for a uniquely compelling story, whether or not you're among the millions of musical lovers around the world for whom his recordings are a vital link to Broadway at its best.