Love show tunes? Want to get some for
FREE? If you have a
Jackson District Library card, you can download up to three mp3 tracks a week. Where else can you legally download music at no charge? I got an e-mail this week telling me about this service and at first I wasn't very excited. My first guess was that the music would be odd, old, and unwanted. Wrong. The database may be poorly organized and the search engine leaves a lot to be desired but the collection itself is a treasure trove of surprises.
I'm just going to talk about show tunes here but there are current country, R&B, Pop, and jazz selections available from Beyonce to Brubeck to Yo Yo Ma.
Since shows are listed by performers (and first names at that) one of the first I checked out was Ella Logan and David Wayne. When I clicked on their names, I brought up the 1947 recording of
Finian's Rainbow, which includes
Old Devil Moon and
How are Things in Glocca Morra. It would take a couple of weeks to download all the songs including the
Overture but it could be done. You can save songs in a Wishlist and it is probably a good idea to read the FAQ section for help in searching. Later I discovered that last year's revival of
Finian's Rainbow was also available.
Here's a partial list of what I found:
Into the Woods; Merrily We Roll Along; Sweeney Todd; tick, tick, BOOM!; Godspell; Ragtime; Songs for a New World; Jekyll & Hyde; Peter Pan; Next to Normal; etc. So you can see the variety of old and new original Broadway cast recordings is vast. Unfortunately some are listed under ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST, ORIGINAL CAST RECORDING, MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK, MUSICAL CAST RECORDING, etc. By browsing I found Linda Eder's self titled album and a several of Kristin Chenoweth's. (Did I mention that you can play samples just like on Amazon?) One that particularly surprised me was
Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, which is currently on Broadway although I read it was getting ready to close soon.
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1 comment:
And I just attended a Jackson Symphony Orchestra concert, liked one of the pieces played and was able to download it for FREE from the library. How cool is that?
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