Triumph of Love: The Recording Session
By Andrew Gans
I eagerly awaited the weekend recording sessions of Triumph of Love, the Jeffrey Stock/ Susan Birkenhead/ Michael Magruder musical that opened this past season on Broadway to rave reviews, but had an unfortunately short run. Starring in the romantic musical comedy were Betty Buckley, F. Murray Abraham and Susan Egan with supporting players Roger Bart, Kevin Chamberlin and Nancy Opel, and all have agreed to take part in the recording.
Day 1
On Saturday morning, June 13, I awake to a torrential downpour, but as I leave to attend the Triumph recording, the sun begins to show itself. Just a few blocks from my apartment, I arrive at the Clinton recording studios on 10th Avenue and 46th Street just before two o’clock.
The studio is up a long set of stairs, and when I enter, it is already filled with the sounds of the musicians, who are positioned in a semi-circle around the conductor. Three of the cast members–F. Murray Abraham, Roger Bart and Kevin Chamberlin–have already arrived and are milling about the cavernous but jam-packed room. There are eleven musicians in all (the same artists who comprised the orchestra at the Royale Theatre) playing a mix of instruments, and this will be a live recording; that is, the singers will perform simultaneously with the orchestra rather than laying down vocals to pre-recorded tracks. Recording “live” will yield a more spontaneous, theatrical recording, exactly the way an original cast recording should sound.
I make my way to the sound booth, 
which has a large glass window
that looks directly into the recording studio. Inside the booth at this point are John Yap,
who is producing the recording; his sound engineer Jonathan Allen
(of Abbey Road Studios), who is situated at an impressively large
sound control board; and composer Jeffrey Stock, who is visibly
excited about the recording of his first musical.
Yap has just a few moments to chat with me about his company and the recording of Triumph, and he also hands me a schedule of the recording session for the next two days.
“At Jay we specialize in show tunes, musical
theatre,” explains Yap. “We’ve done quite a lot of Broadway cast
albums. We did The Baker’s Wife, the London cast. 
We did Baby,
The Rink with Liza and Chita, Jerry’s Girls and On Your Toes.
We’ve also embarked on a series of first complete recordings of
all the great classics using the original orchestrations, which
is exciting a lot of people . . . We’ve done Guys and Dolls, Annie
Get Your Gun, The King and I, South Pacific, West Side Story,
Sweet Charity, 110 in the Shade, Lady in the Dark . . .”
Yap also discussed the series of events that led him to produce the Triumph cast album. “I think there was a bit of a problem, for whatever reason, trying to get the cast album of Triumph of Love done,” he surmises. “I recently dealt with one of the lawyers of the authors of one of our [other] recordings–and he gave me a call and said, ‘Look, we have this show [Triumph of Love]. Would you like to consider recording it?’ And I said, ‘Fine.’ At that point I was on my way to New York to complete a recording of The Most Happy Fella, so I met with various people, met with Betty, and that’s when we decided, about two-and-a-half months ago, [to record the show], and now here we are.”
It’s now about 2:20 pm, and Roger Bart and Kevin Chamberlin are
rehearsing their second-act comedic turn, “Henchmen Are Forgotten.”
A video camera is set up to focus on the conductor, so that Nancy
Opel can dub in her portion of that song on Tuesday. Opel, who
has a previous commitment today, will attend the Sunday session
tomorrow, although Susan Egan, who starred as Princess Leonide,
will be forced to miss both weekend sessions (she’s performing
in Hello, Again in Los Angeles), and will dub her vocal tracks
on Tuesday.
It’s now 2:30, and Betty Buckley
has just arrived.
Betty’s entrance is greeted warmly and enthusiastically by her
former co-stars and by the show’s creators, who have also made
their way into the control room.
The orchestra for the recording is being conducted by Michael Kosarin (the show’s musical consultant who was an invaluable part of Triumph’s musical development) with Patrick Brady, who conducted the show at the Royale, at the piano.