I’m happy and excited to announce that my latest album – Let’s Go to the Movies – will be available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and all major streaming platforms beginning September 1.
This was a fun project to work on, and I hope you will enjoy listening to the tracks on this album. It is also easily the most ambitious album I have put together, spanning a variety of different musical styles with arrangements ranging from full orchestra to jazz combo, and instrumentation from acoustic guitar to dulcimer (!).
In some ways, the genesis of Let’s Go to the Movies goes back to Michael Feinstein’s 1993 album “Michael Feinstein Sings the Jerry Herman Songbook”. That album opens with the song Just Go to the Movies, which I quickly realized would serve as a great opening to a more generic collection of songs from Hollywood.
Developing an actual album, however, took a little longer.
As I was in final production for Come Dance With Me in the fall of 2022, I started considering options for my next album project – and revisited Just Go to the Movies and the possibilities it presented. But with the wealth of songs available under this heading, I realized quickly that any project like this would need some boundaries to help focus the selection of songs.
Songs that had won Oscars? Songs by one composer? Songs from one time period? All of these could work, but came with their own limitations. In the end, I tried to collect songs that I particularly liked (or that had special meaning for me), but that also were well known and that either came from or were strongly associated with specific movies.
Some choices came quickly – Moonlight Becomes You, Bella Notte, Go the Distance, and (by special request) Heaven. As Time Goes By wasn’t written for Casablanca, but is so strongly associated with it that I knew it fell under this umbrella. A few Rainbows here, and little Golden Ticket there, and pretty soon I had a draft song list – and a lot of work ahead to develop orchestrations for this full set.
All together, the songs on this album span over 70 years of iconic Hollywood music making. It’s wonderful to reflect not only how these songs have – in some ways – served as a soundtrack for our lives, but also how they can continue to do so in the future. I hope you enjoy taking this trip with me.
Let’s Go to the Movies releases September 1, 2023 on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and all major streaming platforms.