Since the mid-"90s, the British label JAY Productions Ltd., under the aegis of producer John Yap, has been turning out studio cast recordings of well-known stage musicals, frequently using performers from the Broadway and West End theaters. While some of these recordings have been better than others, their drawing card tends to be the claim that they are "complete" -- at least, they include more music than is generally heard on a cast album, sometimes running onto a second disc -- and they employ the original orchestrations. By the mid-2000s, JAY had built up quite a library of competently performed show music, allowing for assemblages such as this, a discount-priced three-CD set (that could have fit on two discs) containing 42 songs from 39 musicals (The Phantom of the Opera, Guys and Dolls, and Les Mis rables get two each), sung by 39 theater professionals. The names of most of those singers are likely to be largely unfamiliar to even a seasoned theatergoer, although several have enjoyed starring roles on Broadway, notably Len Cariou (A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd), Gregg Edelman (City of Angels), Rebecca Luker (revivals of Show Boat, The Sound of Music, and The Music Man), Cathy Rigby (several revivals of Peter Pan), and Alice Ripley (Sideshow), and many others can boast Broadway credits, if only as replacements or understudies. (Others have been seen in the West End.) For the most part, they do not sing songs on this disc associated with the shows in which they appeared, however, although there are exceptions. Kim Criswell, who was in Nine, sings "Unusual Way" from that show; Todd Graff, featured in Baby, sings that musical"s "I Chose Right"; Rigby is heard in a song from Peter Pan; and veteran Jerry Lanning, who made his Broadway debut in Mame, gets to sing the title song, which he did not do on-stage. But if the performers here usually are not stars, they do sing well, though on occasion their interpretations are questionable. In particular, Thomas Allen, an operatic baritone, sounds nothing like a Damon Runyan gambler singing "My Time of Day/I"ve Never Been in Love Before" from Guys and Dolls. He certainly can sing, though (as a long career at Covent Garden would attest), and so can all of the others. As a collection, the set is seemingly random, with songs from different eras following each other and the choices ranging from familiar standards to obscurities. There are even a few ringers. The songs "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?," "Hopelessly Devoted to You," "Easy to Love," and "Thoroughly Modern Millie" originated in the movies, not on Broadway (though they all turned up there eventually); "Try to Remember" is from The Fantasticks, an Off-Broadway show; and "The Old Apartment" is from I Sing!, described by annotator Rexton S. Bunnett as a "new show" that is "the youngest on this set." So young, in fact, that it has not played on Broadway at all! (Although it has been kicking around since 1999, the closest I Sing! had come to Broadway as of 2004 was a concert performance at the Off-Broadway York Theatre Company in 2002. But JAY has recorded it as a two-CD set, hence its inclusion here.) ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi