Highlights from Jekyll & Hyde [Concept]

by Jekyll & Hyde Highlights / O.C.R.

Overview

In 1970, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice produced a studio-cast "concept" album of their intended stage musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Twenty years later, Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse took the same path with Jekyll & Hyde, beginning their journey to the stage with a "highlights" disc on which songs from the score were sung by Les Miserables star Colm Wilkinson in the title roles and Linda Eder playing two female leads. Little of Robert Louis Stevenson's original plot was retained by lyricist Bricusse (not that that's unusual in the many other versions), but more difficult was that very little story was apparent among these highlights. Only a few plot points were pursued in short numbers, while the bulk of the album was given over to power ballads and the kind of slow-building anthems of romantic devotion that littered adult contemporary charts in the '80s. All resembled songs from a romantic movie, rather than a science-fiction/horror story; even Jekyll's big ballad before turning into Hyde, "This Is the Moment," sounded more like something from a self-help tape. Wilkinson gamely used his high, slightly phlegmy tenor to express outsized emotion, while Eder employed many of the oversinging vocal effects common to Barbra Streisand's work, while making no noticeable distinction between her roles of ingenue and whore (not that the lyrics did, either). On the whole, it was hard to find a show in this recording. A month after this album was released, Jekyll & Hyde was staged at the Alley Theatre in Houston with Eder, but not Wilkinson. In 1994, a second studio-cast album, a two-CD "complete work" version of Jekyll & Hyde, was released; there was then a national tour of the show, and in 1997, Jekyll & Hyde finally came to Broadway. The original Broadway cast album revealed that seven songs from the first version were in use onstage, sometimes in altered form. ~ William Ruhlmann

Product Details

Release Date:	04/17/1990
Label:	Rca Victor
UPC:	0090266041626
Rank:	132012

Tracks

1. Once upon a Dream
2. Hospital Board
3. Love Has Come of Age
4. Possessed
5. This Is the Moment
6. Transformation
7. Seduction
8. Someone Like You
9. No One Must Ever Know
10. Till You Came into My Life
11. No One Knows Who I Am
12. Retribution
13. Letting Go
14. A New Life
15. It's Over Now
16. We Still Have Time
17. Once upon a Dream

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Frank Wildhorn   Primary Artist,Piano
Colm Wilkinson   Primary Artist,Vocals
Linda Eder   Primary Artist,Vocals
Dan Wilensky   Saxophone
Kim Scharnberg   Conductor

Technical Credits

John Naslen   Engineer
Kim Scharnberg   Orchestration
Lance Phillips   Mixing,Engineer
John Rod   Assistant Engineer
Karl Richardson   Producer,Mixing
Rupert Coulson   Assistant Engineer
Jeremy Roberts   Arranger
Linda Eder   Performer
Leslie Bricusse   Liner Notes,Composer
Frank Wildhorn   Producer,Composer
Ben Fowler   Assistant Engineer
Colm Wilkinson   Performer
Bobby Colomby   Assistant Engineer
Andy Strange   Assistant Engineer