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Braille Transcription Broadway Hits and Scores

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In my last blog post highlighting the Music Section‘s newest braille music acquisitions I mentioned the Glee Songbook: Easy Piano, and also “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by Cole Porter. These titles easily bring to mind the subject of Broadway musicals. For quite some time the Music Section has been offering a selection of braille transcription Broadway songs.

Here are some examples:

Les Misérables, BRM 29613 – Arrangements made easy for piano with lyrics.

Les Mis, as it commonly referred to, is currently playing at the Imperial Theatre in New York City. It is a wonderful production based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo. A familiar musical selection from the show is the duet “A Heart Full of Love,” sung by characters Marius and Cosette.

Rent: Movie Vocal Selections, BRM 35986 (also available on BARD).

Rent debuted as a musical on Broadway in 1996. In 2005, it was produced as a movie. The storyline is loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohéme. Our songbook includes hits such as: “Seasons of Love,” “Rent,” “Light My Candle,” “La Vie Boheme,” and “Love Heals.”

Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, BRM 29085 – Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Sweeney Todd hit Broadway in 1979. It is a thriller based on a novel by the early twentieth century authur, Hugh Wheeler. It is also a movie. In the 2007 award winning film, directed by Tim Burton, actor Johnny Depp plays Benjamin Barker, the infamous barber for whom the production is named.

More musicals in our collection include: Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, and The King and I, to name a few. Additionally, we have the ever popular The Best of Broadway: 80 Great Songs of the American Musical Theatre, BRM 27011, which contains many of Broadway’s most popular hits from various productions before 1979 arranged for voice and piano.

We are planning to add transcriptions of selections from Hairspray and Wicked in the near future.

Are you interested in any of these titles, or do you want to know more about other items in our collection? Leave us a comment below. To access our online catalog visit, www.loc.gov/nls. A link to searching the catalog is located at the top of the page. As always, happy reading! Let us know how we can help.

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