Paradise Square to Release Broadway Cast Recording

New musical Paradise Square is set to release an original Broadway cast recording. It will receive a digital release in May and a physical release this summer. The production, directed by  Moisés Kaufman, opened at the Barrymore Theatre on April 3. Exact dates for the album will be announced later.

Paradise Square features a book co-written by Christina Anderson, Craig Lucas and Larry Kirwan. The music is by Jason Howland and Kirwan with lyrics by Nathan Tysen and additional material by Masi Asare. Alex Sanchez provides the musical staging, in collaboration with Kaufman and Jones. 

Jason Howland and Billy Jay Stein, who won the 2015 Grammy Award for the Original Broadway Cast Recording for Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, will produce the recording. Three-time Tony Award winner Garth H. Drabinsky serves as executive producer, with Craig Haffner, Sherry Wright, and Jeffrey A. Sine as co-executive producers.

The original recording will feature stars Joaquina Kalukango, Chilina Kennedy, John Dossett, Sidney DuPont, A.J. Shively, Nathaniel Stampley, Gabrielle McClinton, Jacob Fishel, Matt Bogart and Kevin Dennis.

The production's ensemble includes Garrett Coleman, Jason Oremus, Colin Barkell, Karen Burthwright, Kennedy Caughell, Dwayne Clark, Conor Coleman, Eric Craig, Colin Cunliffe, Chloe Davis, Josh Davis, Bernard Dotson, Jamal Christopher Douglas, Camille Eanga-Selenge, Sam Edgerly, Shiloh Goodin, Sean Jenness, Joshua Keith, Jay McKenzie, Ben Michael, Kayla Pecchioni, Eilis Quinn, Lee Siegel, Erica Spyres, Lael van Keuren, Sir Brock Warren, Alan Wiggins, Kristen Beth Williams and Hailee Kaleem Wright.

Within this story of racial harmony undone by a country at war with itself, audiences will meet the denizens of a local saloon called Paradise Square. They include Nelly O'Brien (Kalukango), the indomitable Black woman who owns it; Annie Lewis (Kennedy), her Irish-Catholic sister-in-law and her Black minister husband, Rev. Samuel Jacob Lewis (Stampley); Willie O’Brien (Matt Bogart), Nelly’s Irish husband, who is off fighting for the Union army; Owen Duignan (Shively), a conflicted newly arrived Irish immigrant; Washington Henry (DuPont), a fearless freedom seeker; Frederic Tiggens (Dossett), an anti-abolitionist political boss, and Milton Moore (Fishel), a penniless songwriter trying to capture it all. They have conflicting notions of what it means to be an American while living through one of the most tumultuous eras in our country’s history.