The Dress Circle with Ted Otten and Michael Kownacky
Sundays at 7 pm
With music drawn from their personal and vast music collection, our co-hosts feature the best of Broadway, stage music from around the world, film scores, and the performing arts.
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The holidays seem to induce memories, and some of them seem to be rather interesting. This is the case with this week’s Dress Circle (12/21 7:00 p.m.) and our playlist of songs from musicals and films that make up some of our holiday memories. Several of these may not be what you might expect.
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In the past, we’ve looked at various types of songs found in musicals such as the “I want” songs where a character lets the audience know his or her reasons for doing things. In this week’s Dress Circle (7/14 7:00 p.m.), we’re going to be looking at ‘story songs” which are, oddly enough, songs that tell stories. Sometimes, those stories are life-histories, but many times, they act as allegories.
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The end is nigh! Well, the end of the year, that is. Welcome to December, and to kick off the month of wishes and gifts, we’re going to be looking at a dozen musicals that opened in New York this month on this week’s Dress Circle (12/7 7:00 p.m.). We’ll be looking at 125 years of musical history, from Victor Herbert’s “The Ameer” in 1899 through to the 2024 revival of “Gypsy” that starred Audra McDonald and Danny Burstein.
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We’re turning to our third and final (for now) program of Literary Based Musicals on this week’s Dress Circle (11/30 7:00 p.m.), and we’re once again looking at four very different works from Broadway, television, and London's West End.
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The year is speeding by, and it’s unbelievable that we’re already facing Thanksgiving, but face it we must. To get you ready, this week’s Dress Circle (11/23 7:00 p.m.) is all about “thanks.” Well, songs that say “thank” in some way.
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BECAUSE OF THE LENGTH OF THIS WEEK’S SUNDAY OPERA, THE DRESS CIRCLE WILL BEGIN ONE HOUR LATER THAN USUAL AT 8:00 P.M. (ET). As promised, we’re back with more Literary Based Musicals on this week’s Dress Circle (11/16 8:00 p.m.), Once again, we’ve focused on four novels as source material realized in fourteen songs from six different recordings.
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We’re starting a series on this week’s Dress Circle (11/9 7:00 p.m.). (We hope.) with four musicals that were based on literary originals. Three novels and a play are the basis for this week’s playlist that begins with songs from “The Color Purple" and includes songs from a variety of sources for "Little Women," "Mary Poppins," and "Peter Pan."
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We did our best to catalogue musicals that opened in New York for which some sort of recordings are available. November’s list has over 200 openings, and on this week’s Dress Circle (11/2 7:00 p.m.), we’re going to be sampling selections from a dozen of those shows spanning 131 years of Broadway history.
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It’s Ted’s Turn.As promised, we’re looking at some of Ted’s favorites on this week’s Dress Circle (10/26 7:00 p.m.) that will include three songs from his favorite musical (He actually as one of those.), Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.”
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We’re turning to the first of two programs on this week’s Dress Circle (10/19 7:00 p.m.) that will feature some of our favorite songs from stage and screen musicals and soundtracks. Michael is up first, and he’s chosen 13 vastly different songs that really do express his rather eclectic tastes, and by no means is this even the tip of the iceberg of the list of his “favorites.”