Sweeney Todd: Tiny Desk Concert

By Josh Rogosin

Published December 22, 2023 at 7:00 AM PST

My parents brought me to see a production of Sweeney Todd when I was 10; I had nightmares for weeks. That may have been the beginning of my obsession with the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

"We're so grateful to sing Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece every single day," Josh Groban explains at the Tiny Desk. "He was so brilliant at juxtaposing the beautiful with the horrific." (It turns out that both Groban and I named our dogs "Sweeney Dog," something I learned when I introduced the cast.)

Expect a wave of emotions throughout this performance: empathy for Sweeney (Groban) and Mrs. Lovett (Annaleigh Ashford) with their songs of vengeance and longing, "My Friends" and "By the Sea"; desire with the quartet's vocal counterpoint performed in "Johanna (Act 2 Sequence)"; laughter with the duet's performance of "A Little Priest." Incredibly, this Tiny Desk version of the musical is no less impactful — the 26-piece orchestra currently playing the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre gets a nine-piece orchestration courtesy of Jonathan Tunick, Sondheim's longtime collaborator, led by conductor Alex Lacamoire. Absolutely mesmerizing.

Advertisement

Become a KPBS sponsor

SET LIST

"My Friends"
"By the Sea"
"Johanna (Act 2 Sequence)"
"A Little Priest"

COMPOSER

Stephen Sondheim

ORCHESTRATIONS

Advertisement

Become a KPBS sponsor

Jonathan Tunick

CAST

Josh Groban ("Sweeney Todd")
Annaleigh Ashford ("Mrs. Lovett")
Daniel Yearwood ("Anthony Hope")
Maria Bilbao ("Johanna")
Joanna Carpenter ("Beggar Woman")

MUSICIANS

Todd Palmer: clarinet
Damian Primis: bassoon
Sarah Boxmeyer: French horn
John Chudoba: trumpet
Kory Grossman: percussion
Adam Rothenberg: piano, keyboard
Anna Parks: violin
Wayne Smith: cello
Chiho Saegusa: bass
Alex Lacamoire: conductor
Randy Cohen: keyboard programmer
David Lai: music supervisor

TINY DESK TEAM

Producer/Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin
Director/Editor: Kara Frame
Videographers: Kara Frame, Maia Stern, Joshua Bryant, Keren Carrión
Animation: Jackie Lay
Series Producer: Bobby Carter
Audio Assistants: Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez and Neil Tevault
Production Assistant: Ashley Pointer
Photographer: Grace Widyatmadja
Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Lars Gotrich, Hazel Cills
VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins
Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags

MusicNPR Top Stories

Josh Rogosin

Josh Rogosin (he/him) stumbled into NPR HQ in 1999 on his way to mixing shows at The Shakespeare Theatre in downtown DC. Since then, he has been at the controls for all of NPR's flagship newsmagazines and gathered sound in far flung places like Togo and Benin, West Africa, Cambodia and Greece for the Radio Expeditions series. He has engineered at NPR West and NPR NY and spent two years as Technical Director at Marketplace Productions in Los Angeles. He served as Senior Broadcast Engineer for New York Public Radio and Studio 360, and was an originating producer and sound designer for NPR's Ask Me Another.