To create a cast album, there are essentially three phases: preparation (pre-production), recording (production) and refining (post-production). In “post,” the core team — which includes the album’s mixer, producers and a representative of the record label — reviews all of the recorded footage to choose the best takes, adjust aspects of the sound in each song and finalize the listening experience of the full album. But there are a lot of details to this stage of creating a record.
Continuing in this Broadway News series, these three artists, each occupying a crucial role in recording, will narrate this part of the process:
Scott M. Riesett, record producer: Riesett is a freelance record producer who has been producing music for 30 years — cast albums for 15 of those. His first cast album as a producer was Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s “Catch Me If You Can.”
Tom Kitt, composer, orchestrator, record producer: A Tony Award-winning composer and orchestrator, Kitt has served as an arranger, orchestrator, music director, conductor, music supervisor, composer and lyricist across 17 Broadway shows to date. He has also produced the cast albums for shows featuring his music as well as musicals for which he has orchestrated or arranged.
Scott Farthing, executive vice president of Sony Masterworks U.S.: Farthing supervises the Masterworks Broadway record label as well as the day-to-day operations for the national Sony Masterworks division.
Editor’s note: Every album is singular. Every label and operation works in its own way. The following is meant to serve as a broad example of the ways in which a cast album comes together.
