Hamilton Raps Up 16 Tony nominations

-from NPR

Hamilton, the Broadway musical about "the scrappy young immigrant who forever changed America" has made history, after being nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards. The nominees were announced today.

Hamilton eclipsed the 15 nominations that were garnered by both The Producers(2001) and Billy Elliot (2009). 

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and force behind Hamilton, is nominated for three individual awards, including for best book, best original score and best performance by a lead actor in a musical.

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Hamilton got more Tony nominations than either The Producers or Billy Elliot did in their respective years. Here, Broadway cast members including the show's creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda (in blue), performed at the White House last month.

Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

This year's field of nominees for Best Musical also include:

Bright Star; School of Rock — The Musical; Waitress; Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed

As Jeff Lunden reports for our Newscast unit, Shuffle Along scored 10 nominations despite being the last musical to open this season.

The nominees for Best Play include:

Eclipsed; 
The Father; 
The Humans; King Charles III

Looking at other categories, Jeff adds, "Revivals of Long Day's Journey into Night, A View from the Bridge and She Loves Me dominated their categories."

The Tony Awards show will be broadcast live on CBS at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday, June 12.

A winning night at the Alibi, Part II

Keyboard wiz O'zoune leading the Pon Fyah band during their stint at the Alibi jazz lounge in New Kingston's Gore Centre on Wednesday night. The weekly set was preceded by an amiable and ambitious triple book launch by author Jennifer Grahame, whose tomes, "Jacks Hill Road"  Sex and Scrambled Eggs" and "The Bedhead" garnered good support, some of whom stayed for the ample musical treats and great Alibi fare

Bob (Marley) Heads to Baltimore

As reported in billboard.com - 

The godfather of reggae will live again when Marley has its world premiere at Center Stage in Baltimore next month.

Written and directed by award-winning British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah (Elmina's Kitchen), the new musical featuring songs by Bob Marley tells the story of a pivotal moment of his life in the late 1970s, when he returned to Jamaica after two years of self-imposed exile in London following an assassination attempt. The show uses events surrounding that homecoming to chronicle the musician's transformation into a 20th century cultural icon.

The project marks the first time that Marley's songs have been featured onstage in a biographical context. The musical includes, among others, songs from the albums Exodus, Kaya and Rastaman Vibration, written during the period when the story is set.

The title role will be played by Mitchell Brunings, who became a YouTube sensation after performing Marley's songs on the Dutch version of The Voice.

The cast also includes Broadway regular Saycon Sengbloh (Motown: The Musical, Fela!) as Rita Marley; Mykal Kilgore as Stevie Wonder, Krystal Joy Brown as backup singer Judy Mowatt; and Ano Okero as producer and filmmaker Don Letts. Other real-life figures portrayed in the show include Peter Tosh (Michael Luwoye), Island Records founder Chris Blackwell (John Patrick Hayden), Bunny Wailer (Damian Thompson), Marley's art director Neville Garrick (Jaime Lincoln Smith) and Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley(Howard W. Overshown).

The production features music direction by Jason Webb, choreography byGermaul Barnes, scenic design by Neil Patel and costumes by ESosa.

Suzette Newman and Blackwell are producing for Stageplay. The Baltimore engagement runs May 7 through June 14, and while no plans for the project have been announced beyond the premiere, theater insiders are speculating about a future commercial life in New York or London if Marley is well-received.

This article originally appeared in THR.com. 

Live Muisc; Bent x 2 +1 = Great musical experience

Its not all t hat often that members of a musical family this talented appear in the same venue at once (the title equation refers to Rupert Bent Sr and Jr and Jana Bent (daughter of one, brother to the other), who played to an appreciative audience at Redbones last Wednesday. The "official" occasion was to mark the start of a new Wednesday residency by Bent Sr at Redbones (once a month; he also has regular gigs at Morgan's Harbour and at the Pegasus) and unofficially to join Jr in celebrating 15 years of marriage to wife Michelle. With such a pleasant confluence of occasions, spirits were bound to be high and no one left disappointed

Fittingly, Bent Sr started off the evening, in Marley mode with "Redemption Song" thereafter proceeding amiably through covers spanning the gamut of rock and pop. He hit an early high on Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do (You Do For Love)" and I say this because on that piece, his playing not seemed more robust, but the balance between his guitar and the accompanying track seemd more harmonious than in the earlier selections, when it appeared that he was almost drowned out at times. Bent Sr. would scale even greater heights with a one-two punch of Santana - "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va" that kept him on his feet and had the audience tapping theirs.

After a brief intermission, it was family time. Despite having two full-length albums to her credit, songs placed in international TV shows ('The Hills") and a bonafide hit in "You So Fine", Jana Bent has spent more of her time and energy in recent years in the corporate (or statutory) world, working with gaming regulator the Betting gaming and Lotteries Commission. Musically, she has put her abilities and experience ot a very notable "side project" - the Shaggy Parrot series of enviro-themed children's books, which are proving very popular. So she has been busy. But when Dad asks, one can hardly say no, so there she was, belting out "Natural Woman" with much gusto, this accompanied by Bent Jr, who wento on to his own dynamic guitar exposition (was it Sting's "Fragile"?) before playing in tandem with his father.

Famalail duties of my own called me away at that point, but not after having had a very welcome refresher on the musical gifts of the family Bent.

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