Telly Leung (photo: Leon Le Photography via The Broadway Blog.)
Yellow Sound Label has announced the new album from Telly Leung, star of this season’s new Broadway musical Allegiance opposite George Takei and Lea Salonga. A dynamic singer and actor best known as Wes on “Glee” and his Broadway work in Godspell, Rent and Flower Drum Song, Telly was named one of last year’s Out 100 and “Faces To Watch” by The Los Angeles Times. Songs for You will be released on Friday, November 20, with the lead single “New York State of Mind” available on Friday, October 23.
Songs for You—a follow up to Telly’s acclaimed 2012 debut album I’ll Cover You—will feature familiar classic songs from the worlds of Pop, Jazz, R&B, and Broadway done with a new and innovative twist, accompanied by lush musical arrangements by Gary Adler, Mary Ann McSweeney, Jesse Vargas, and Telly himself. The album, produced by Michael Croiter, will be available on iTunes, Amazon.com and at live performances.
Songs for You features songs originally recorded by Michael Jackson (“Human Nature”), Oleta Adams (“I Just Had to Hear Your Voice”), Mama Cass Elliot (“Make Your Own Kind of Music”), John Denver (“Leaving On A Jet Plane”), Des’ree (“You Gotta Be”) and more. To honor his Broadway roots, Telly also includes songs by his favorite theater composers Stephen Sondheim (“Being Alive”), Jerry Herman (“I Am What I Am”) and Stephen Schwartz (“Dreamscape”), in addition to the world premiere recording of “Second Chances” from the pre-Broadway engagement of Allegiance, which opens on Broadway at the Longacre Theater on November 8.
“All of the selections from Songs for You are classics,” says Telly, “and I worship at the altar of the artists that originated them. The challenge for me and my musicians: how to make them our own. We discovered that the way to truly do that was to not think of ‘the self’ at all, but to focus the sentiment and the energy of the song towards someone else. Who are we singing to? Why are we singing this song? When we found the ‘who’ in the song, we found our way in. We unearthed a deep, personal connection to the music that made these timeless songs come to life again. We hope that our listeners will feel the generosity of spirit that was intended with each track.”
For more information, visit www.TellyLeung.com.
