Nominations for the 49th Annual GRAMMY Awards have been announced by The Recording Academy and five Broadway shows will be competing for the Best Musical Show Album award. SWEENEY TODD, THE PAJAMA GAME, THE COLOR PURPLE, THE DROWSY CHAPERONE and JERSEY BOYS, all 2006 Tony Award winners, will be featured when the GRAMMY Awards are nationally televised Sunday, February 11th on CBS.
The tale of SWEENEY TODD, the demon barber of Fleet Street, is set in dark Victorian England. On a simple stage, ten actors play their own instruments and bring the chilling Stephen Sondheim masterpiece to life. The winner of two 2006 Tony Awards, including Best Direction of a Musical, SWEENEY TODD closed on Broadway last September but will begin a national tour later this year. The GRAMMY-nominated cast album features Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris.
THE PAJAMA GAME is set during union disputes at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory and centers around a love story between two people representing opposite sides of the dispute. The GRAMMY-nominated cast album features crooner Harry Connick, Jr. and Kelli O’Hara. The light-hearted musical received two 2006 Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical. It closed on Broadway in June but will begin touring the country in 2007.
Spanning 40 years, THE COLOR PURPLE tells the story of a woman, who, through love, finds the strength to triumph over adversity in her life and discover her unique voice in the world. The show’s cast album features LaChanze, winner of the 2006 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical and Elisabeth Withers-Mendes, among others. Produced by Oprah Winfrey, THE COLOR PURPLE is currently playing on Broadway and will begin a national tour in Chicago in April.
THE DROWSY CHAPERONE begins when a die-hard musical-theater fan plays his favorite cast album on his turntable and the musical literally bursts to life in his living room, telling the lively tale of a Broadway starlet trying to find, and keep, her true love. The GRAMMY-nominated cast album features the original Broadway cast with Bob Martin, Sutton Foster, and Beth Leavel, among others. Winner of five 2006 Tony Awards, THE DROWSY CHAPERONE continues to play on Broadway and will also begin a national tour in 2007.
Based on the lives of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, JERSEY BOYS is the story of how a group of blue-collar boys from the wrong side of the tracks rose to become one of the biggest American pop music sensations of all time. The GRAMMY-nominated cast album features the original Broadway cast with Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard, Jr., Robert Spencer, and John Lloyd Young. JERSEY BOYS enjoyed an extremely successful 2006; the show took home the 2006 coveted Best Musical Tony Award, was #1 on Billboard’s Top Broadway Albums chart, has been playing to sold-out New York audiences and launched a national tour in San Francisco at the end of 2006.
The 49th Annual GRAMMY Awards will be held on Sunday, February 11 and will be broadcast live on CBS from 8:00 – 11:30 PM (EST). For a complete list of nominations visit www.grammy.com.
By: Beth Cox
