Aaron Lazar’s star-studded album Impossible Dream is a triumph of celebration and collaboration
“And the world will be better for thisThat one man, scorned and covered with scarsStill strove with his last ounce of courage”
It takes something to make a version of Candide’s ‘Make Our Garden Grow’ make the hairs on your arm stand on end like never before. Leonard Bernstein’s soaring operetta has long been revered but sung here with such perfect emotional clarity by Aaron Lazar, with Kelli O’Hara alongside the massed sound of Broadway Inspirational Voices and National Children’s Chorus and accompanied by Onyx Lane Chamber Orchestra, it’s an extraordinary rendition of an extraordinary song.
The track sits in the middle of Lazar’s studio album Impossible Dream, released earlier this year by Studio Seven Media – and just nominated for a Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album Grammy – after he revealed his diagnosis with ALS (also known as motor neurone disease). Not unexpectedly, his Broadway brothers and sisters pulled in close, heeding the call for an inspirational response and this album of duets, proceeds from which will benefit the ALS Network, is thus full of hope and love and musical excellence, not least Lazar’s creamy tenor.
There’s lovely variety over these nine songs. From a joyful skip through ‘Get Happy/Happy Days are Here Again’ with the smooth-voiced Leslie Odom Jr to an impassioned take on Carousel’s ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ with Loren Allred, the classics are more than covered. But as Kate Baldwin joins for a run through Jason Robert Brown’s ‘I’d Give It All For You’ from Songs For A New World and Neil Patrick Harris boards for Fight the Dragons’ from Andrew Lippa’s Big Fish, new musical theatre writing gets its due too.
The finale brings together a mahoosive group performance of Man of La Mancha’s “The Impossible Dream” which brings together all the duettists with an ensemble of over 50 people like Kristin Chenoweth, Sting, Shoshana Bean and Lin-Manuel Miranda. As titanic as that is, the real treat comes in the duet on Cole Porter’s ‘I Am Loved’ with the late Rebecca Luker who died from ALS in 2020, the brightness of her soprano as inspirational as it ever was. A powerful collection of songs.
