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Exclusive: Go Inside the Recording Studio with the Cast of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO!
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Nov 7, 2022
The cast of new musical DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, which opened on April 21st and closed on May 10th, 2015 at the Broadway Theatre, hit the recording studio this spring to prepare for the release of the show's original cast recording, which is now available via Broadway Records HERE. Below, check out an exclusive inside look at the cast in the recording studio!
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In this house
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In this house, I still hear the music
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Velvet shoes dancing down the stairs. down the stair. By this cross, we read our family Bible, prayer by prayer
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In this room, I have held my husband. In this chair, I have nursed a son. In this house
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memories surround me one by one. Today we are recording the cast album of Dr. Javago the musical
1:06
All the writers and the composer and the director and creators of this show are together
1:12
putting it down for posterity with the original cast from New York
1:16
We're at the Manhattan Center Studios in the Grand Ballroom. It's beautiful in there. I mean I walked in this morning and I was like
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oh my god, look at this place. It's at. absolutely fantastic. You walk in and it's like we're in this huge ballroom
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The orchestra's there, they cast all, there's like so many mics and they're set up on stage
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I mean it's like so huge which I guess just works for Chicago, doesn't it
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So it was wonderful to hear that full beautiful orchestra, those beautiful orchestrations
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again and to be able to sing like that. The sound is just overpowering
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I was singing it here has been awesome because we're in the absolute same. space as the orchestra
1:55
They're right in front of you. So, I mean, most of the time we're just taking our headphones off and like
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screw it, I'm singing with an orchestra live. I've never heard the orchestra sounds so pure
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and the voices sound so committed, it's beautiful. Oh, God, it's so good to see everybody
2:11
And it's so nice to sing these songs again. To actually come back and see everybody as well, it's really
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it's lovely, and everyone's really excited to be recording this finally. This is a glorious day, and it's an honor to be a part of this recording
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Hold you in my arms so I can feel God in his perfection
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This is why I live This I know is me
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To feel the way I do Forever free, forever true
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On the edge of time with you During the Russian Revolution and its aftermath as a musical
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And then I said, yes, I'll do it. Because I love to do the crazy challenges
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How can you do Dr. Javago? This is this very big epic
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How was I going to try to condense it? And I decided it's not something that should be condensed
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It's something that should go into another form. Lucy shares that sense of melody, I think, with the great Russian composer
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She just has a knack for creating melodies that get into your blood
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And I also think the story of Yuri Javago and Largo and Laar Guichar, and of course the Bolshevik revolution
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and the creation of Soviet totalitarianism is one of the most important stories in history
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Mercy you plead, mercy you get! I'll be here waiting and watching you sweat like a rat in a cage
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Fringing and dread, cornered like me when the gutter ran red, and the steel blades
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tore through our skin as the Tsar's guard bellowed its infamous call
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Now reap what you saw No mercy Hello
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Lovely little Tanya, haven't you done well
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Marrying this doctor And a poet Time will tell To marriage and children, those busy birds and bees
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may the angels bless your happiness and spare me from it, please
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You know, you take a very complicated book, but at the center, it's a simple story
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It's a love story between two people, and those two people are involved with other people
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So basically it's three men in love with one woman and two women in love with one man
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And each of the scenes you decide to write about have to in some way further that story. way further that story
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I bring you in. I feel you want my skin. You melt away the cold and pain and fear
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And there may not you'll be another day, but I know my life can turn this way
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I love you And I need to tell you now I need to tell you I need to tell you
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So it was more of an infusion of the Russian palette. She writes the kind of songs that you can whistle
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when you're walking out of the theater. And quite frankly, I had not a lot of experience with that
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It also involved a certain pop sensibility where she came from. And I wanted to stretch myself
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It was actually working with Amy Powers, who was a brilliant lyricist also
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but has more experience in pop. and pop that we kind of found the rhythm
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And we both ended up working on everything. But it comes as no surprise
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She says plashes his wife. And I know I could never interfere
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And a little of me dies when I look into her eyes
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Is it anger? Is it sadness? Is it madness that brings us here
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My process with Michael Corey as a co-loricist was a joy from start to finish
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One of the aspects of this show that I think hasn't been fully understood yet
7:55
is how perfectly integrated it is in music, lyrics, and book. It's like a basket
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It just weaves all the way through. So every element in itself seems familiar
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But the way they've been put together is really very modern and very unusual
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And I think as time goes on and you can make, and people get to examine it more carefully
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they're going to see that this was really quite a radical and interesting and complex show
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I will lay down my gun, though some call it treason. Why should I die
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But I don't have a reason. One more dead means nothing to anyone
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Homeward I go A soldier no longer Leary but stronger My days on the battlefield are done
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But when dusk darkens the sky Watch the moon
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And think of spring I want the days with time to spare until the day you in my heart I wash the moon and know you there I want people to take away from this album the just sheer beauty of this music and these lyrics
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and the storytelling that comes across in these songs. It's such a beautiful combination of all of the things
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that musical theater can do. This is about the power of love, the power of art
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and how what's out. our core rises above in every situation that challenges us
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Great love, true love, however it ends and however it may not turn out the way we like
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to be, it can often be the fuel for some really, really beautiful art
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It's about the fights we have within ourselves and then the struggles that we have sometimes
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with the political systems we find ourselves in and different people's reactions to that
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people's choices in times of challenge and how art and love endure
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You feel the love and you feel the danger and you feel the hurt and it's in the songs
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So I think for people that didn't get to see the show, they'll get to still really live the story
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because the music is just so good. I mean, the show, you know, as a complete piece was wonderful
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piece was wonderful and, you know, and such an experience. But I do feel like the heart of this play is the music
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That's where it's so good. I think the music of this show is brilliant and the lyric. Because the detail in it is it's there
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And hopefully with this cast recording, people will be able to sort of hear that
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and experience it and sort of, you know, live it with us. Even if you haven't seen the show, I mean, for those who, you know
11:13
didn't get the opportunity to see it, hopefully we'll get something on, you know, which will remain forever and for them to people to be actually be able to be part of
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There's a secret hiding in your soul. There's a secret my dear
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And it gets better. It gets better to have it go out with a sense of glory that life and art and love live on after death
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And that's what Dr. Javago is. You can cease you in an instant
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Every time it shows it to But it holds you for a lifetime
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You for life time When love finds you
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