Recording Broadway: A Life in Cast Albums by Thomas Z. Shepard and Gayden Wren

Join us for a free virtual talk with the author on Thursday, January 15, 2026 @ 7:00 p.m. ET

“Grammy Award–winning producer Shepard throws open the door to the recording booth in his exuberant and fine-grained debut memoir.... Broadway aficionados will find plenty to enjoy.” - Publishers Weekly

RECORDING BROADWAY: A LIFE IN CAST ALBUMS of the making of fifty-plus years’ worth of show albums, featuring up-close-and-personal stories of his work with pretty much everyone who was anyone on Broadway, including Julie Andrews, Leonard Bernstein (“truly awesome but very complicated”), Sheldon Harnick (“as warm and decent as he was talented”), Barbara Cook (“one of my favorites”), Placido Domingo, Gregory Hines, John Kander, Fred Ebb, Danny Kaye, Angela Lansbury (“so gifted and so easy to be with and to work with”), Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Stephen Sondheim (“a genius, and very easily bruised”), Barbra Streisand (“as professional at 24 as any veteran I’ve ever worked with”), Andrew Lloyd Webber, and many more.

Alongside this unforgettable saga is the tale of Shepard’s childhood as a small-in-stature piano prodigy from East Orange, New Jersey, and his emergence into the world as a recording producer of, first, classical music and then Broadway cast recordings. Told with verve in Shepard’s inimitable voice― a striking combination of Broadway glitz and classical-music elegance―his journey makes for a uniquely compelling story, whether or not you’re among the millions of musical lovers around the world for whom his recordings are a vital link to Broadway at its best.