Ari Axelrod to Release A PLACE FOR US: A CELEBRATION OF JEWISH BROADWAY Album

PS CLASSICS will release a new album from award-winning musical storyteller Ari Axelrod. A Place for Us: A Celebration of Jewish Broadway will be available on CD and digital formats on Friday, January 17, 2025. Featuring a 13-piece orchestra arranged and conducted by Mike Stapleton, with additional arrangements by Larry Yurman, A Place for Us tells an unforgettable story of a community’s survival built on courage and the yearning for “peace and quiet and open air… somewhere.” Axelrod will celebrate the album release with a special concert at New York’s 54 Below on Saturday, January 18 at 7:00 PM. Tickets are available HERE. The album is produced by Tommy Krasker and Bart Migal, with Ron Thomas serving as executive producer. 
 
The Broadway musical as we know it would not exist without the generations of Jewish songwriters who brought not only their talent but their heritage and perspective to their art. With A Place for Us, Axelrod has gathered a collection of this cherished work through which he finds healing and a sense of home and community, echoing the refuge generations of Jews have sought in the American theater. This new album adapts and expands upon the one-man show he’s performed to raves across the country (called “genuinely one of the finest shows I’ve ever seen” by BroadwayWorld), building on his deep connection to this material and his own Jewish heritage. 
 
Weaving together a century of songs from the likes of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Mary Rodgers, Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel and many others – including Cole Porter, a gentile who said the key to hit songs lay in writing “Jewish tunes” – Axelrod creates a stunning tapestry of the Jewish American experience, from immigration and assimilation to activism, faith and family, revealing in exquisite detail how Jewish liturgy and culture were transformed into a popular music beloved by all. 
 
A Place for Us: A Celebration of Jewish Broadway began with a sold-out run at the renowned New York jazz club Birdland. It has since grown to international acclaim, performing to sold-out audiences around the world and garnering Axelrod a BroadwayWorld Award, the Bistro Award for “Theatrical Artistry in Song” in 2022, a MAC Award nomination for “Best Male Vocalist” in 2020, and now the 2024 Mabel Mercer Foundation's “Julie Wilson Award.” The show has been hailed as “thrilling, haunting and brilliantly acted” by Cabaret Scenes, and “fascinating and beautiful” by Stage and Cinema. The Jewish Press raved: “Axelrod’s powerful voice and heartfelt stories transported guests on a journey through Jewish Broadway, blending timeless classics with personal reflections on Jewish identity and community. His performance was more than just entertainment – it was a celebration of the rich cultural heritage that has shaped Jewish Broadway and, by extension, our own community.”
 
Tommy Krasker, co-founder of PS Classics, comments: “Ron Thomas, who executive-produced Jeff Harnar’s Sondheim album with us, wrote me earlier in the year. He had seen Ari’s show in a couple of incarnations and thought it would make a wonderful album, and wondered if we would be interested in taking it on. I was able to see it via video performance and was instantly entranced. It’s exactly the kind of piece I respond to most, a piece that wears its heart on its sleeve, where the emotional beats are so rich you have a chance to create something that resonates with listeners. But there were challenges, because a good chunk of the stage show is spoken, and we wanted to do an album that was entirely musical. So, there were new songs added and old songs rethought, and an extraordinary amount of creative work put into the album by Ari and his music director, Mike Stapleton. Thanks to their sheer genius, it all pays off. The album very much complements the stage show without slavishly duplicating it, which was our goal. I think it’s a sublime listening experience that will make people even more eager to see the show, and at the same time I think it captures all of the themes and qualities that Ari is so passionate and persuasive at expressing onstage.”

Ari Axelrod – A Place for Us: A Celebration of Jewish Broadway – Track Listing

1. Migratory V (Adam Guettel, from Myths & Hymns)
2. Hatikvah (Shmuel Cohen / traditional; lyric by Naftali Herz Imber)
3. Hope (Jason Robert Brown)
4. Everybody Says Don’t (Stephen Sondheim, from Anyone Can Whistle)
5. You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To (Cole Porter, from Something to Shout About) / Papirosn (Herman Yablokoff / traditional)
6. So in Love (Cole Porter, from Kiss Me Kate)
7. Shalom / Milk and Honey / I Will Follow You (Jerry Herman, from Milk and Honey)
8. You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught (Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II, from South Pacific) / Children Will Listen (Stephen Sondheim, from Into the Woods)
9. Some Enchanted Evening (Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II, from South Pacific)
10. Shy (Mary Rodgers & Marshall Barer, from Once Upon a Mattress)
11. Corner of the Sky (Stephen Schwartz, from Pippin)
12. God Knows Where (Daniel Cainer)
13. Miracle of Miracles (Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick, from Fiddler on the Roof)
14. It Ain’t Necessarily So (George Gershwin & Ira Gershwin, from Porgy & Bess)
15. Lost in the Stars (Kurt Weill & Maxwell Anderson, from Lost in the Stars)
16. Cool (Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim, from West Side Story)
17. Somewhere (Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim, from West Side Story)
18. Bring Him Home (Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil & Herbert Kretzmer, from Les Misérables)
19. Adrift on a Star (Jacques Offenbach & Yip Harburg, from The Happiest Girl in the World) / Silent Spring (Harold Arlen & Yip Harburg)