I am also a serious collector of CDs, with over a thousand discs to my name. The collection is focused on classical music (1800 and later), movie soundtracks, and Broadway shows.

A few years ago, I encoded some samples of things I'd been listening to. Thanks to the magic of RealAudio, you can experience the less serious side of my musical tastes for yourself. All encoding is in stereo, supporting up to 56K ISDN. All active links below go to audio selections, alphabetized by CD name, below.

Broadway Bound

This is a collection of songs from off-Broadway musicals, including works in progress. The composers and lyricists are all young "next generation" theatre composers. This selection is Alan Chapman's Everyone Wants To Be Sondheim, an exceedingly clever jab at imitators, with lots of tiny musical and lyrical references to Sondheim musicals.

Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical

Music by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. This is one of those musicals that never seems to really make it big, but where the concept album's gotten a cult following. Like CHESS, there's a lot of wonderful thematic music here. This selection, from the Broadway cast album, is This is the Moment, sung by Jekyll just before he drinks his formula for the first time -- of course, ironically, this is just before he turns into Hyde, the man of pure evil. This song has gotten some general play, most notably at the Olympic Games.

Martin Guerre

This is the latest Boublil and Schonberg (of Les Miserables fame) musical, an altered version of an old French folk tale. There's a great deal of excellent music here. This selection is the song of the title character, right before he leaves his home village in disgust in order to go off to war.

RENT

The latest sensation to hit Broadway, this is a highly Gen-X rock musical -- cynical yet weirdly hopeful. It's a modern reworking of the Puccini opera La Boheme. This selection is One Song, Glory, sung by a character who is dying from AIDS, near the beginning of the musical. The composer, Jonathan Larson, is tragically no longer alive, dying unexpectedly from an aneurysm just before RENT's opening night on Broadway.

Robotech: Perfect Soundtrack Album

This is a two-disc set of music and songs from all four Robotech TV shows: Macross, Robotech Masters, Next Generation, and the never-completed Sentinels. This selection is In My Heart, one of Yellow Dancer's songs. It radiates Eighties cheeze, but I'm fond of it in a strange retro sort of way.

Shadows of the Empire

Yes, it's part of the Star Wars cash cow, but this "soundtrack" is actually a pretty good; the composer is Joel McNeely, and he's got an interesting feel for dissonances. This selection here is The Seduction of Princess Leia, as everyone's favorite heroine has an encounter with Xizor, a pheremone-exuding green lizard-like ninja (the novel is pulp, plain and simple).

Sherlock Holmes: Classic Themes from 221B Baker Street

This is a collection of Sherlock Holmes film, television, and theatre music. Most of the music on this disc is unavailable anywhere else. This particular selection, I Never Do Anything Twice, from the score to the television movie The Seven Percent Solution (which was never shown, to my knowledge), is an amusing Stephen Sondheim doodle -- it's right up there with The Tennis Match in Larry Gelbart's City of Angels.

Stage Heroes: Colm Wilkinson

Colm Wilkinson is probably best known these days for playing Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. This album has him reprising a number of classic showtunes; I don't normally buy discs of this sort, but I liked the selection -- and his voice -- enough to purchase it. This selection is The Impossible Dream, from Leigh and Darion's Man of La Mancha.

Vanessa Mae: The Classical Album

The prodigy Vanessa Mae made a name for herself with her classical violin and rock fusion debut recording. With this album, she proves she's a fairly talented violinist. However, I didn't buy this because she does anything particularly spectacular with the classical selections here -- the best thing on the disc is her Scottish Fantasy, a Bruch piece that's a common staple of the repertoire, and she fails to meet even the relatively low standards of modern violinists there, not to mention the heights attained by Jascha Heifetz and Alfred Campoli in this work. I bought it because there's a gorgeous Enya-esque reinterpretation of the Bruch on the very last track, which is the selection represented here.

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