Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway (2016)

Barbra Streisand heard a demo of the song “Any Moment Now” that was recorded by its songwriters Marvin Hamlisch and Carolyn Leigh. “When I heard Marvin and Carolyn singing and speaking the characters’ dialogue,” Streisand said, “it made me think ... why not make a duets album where the spoken word could be woven into the fabric of the arrangements, much like a real Broadway musical?”

In December 2015, Barbra told the Hollywood Reporter, “I love doing my albums because I have a wonderful team that I work with.But there's no ego in it. It's like, I'll say something, they come up with something, and, ‘Oh! Ah! Go to the piano and try this!’ It's like doing a play.”

Walter Afanasieff started making instrumental demos for the songs on Encore in the summer of 2015 with his engineer Tyler Gordon. Over at Momentum Studio, Bill Ross also produced demos with his associate Mary Webster. Shortly after the demo work began, David Reitzas recorded the dialogue for the songs at Grandma's House on Streisand's California property. “That was the early stages of creating a kind of dialogue road-map,” Reitzas explained to Sound On Sound magazine. “She performed all the parts of the female vocals, and Walter or her husband [James Brolin] did the male vocal parts.”

David Reitzas continued: “The process is that I load their demos as audio into Pro Tools. I spend time with these demos, making them sound as good as I can, so we can keep building the songs and figuring out the arrangement while we record vocals [...] once it was decided who was going to sing on a track, we had to work out the keys that are best for the singer or singers, which meant that we might have to replace a whole section in the demo, using a different key and with new transitions to get to that key. The arrangements are constantly evolving, and Walter and Bill later in their studios changed the MIDI to match the changes I made to the audio.”

The next step in the process of creating the Encore album was to start recording the final vocals. Sessions began February 12, 2016 at Woodshed Recording.  Many of the promotional videos and interviews for this album were recorded at the craftsman-style studio, situated on a picturesque piece of property in Malibu, California. Jamie Foxx and Streisand recorded “Climb Ev'ry Mountain” first on February 17th. “You cannot tell me that my life is not blessed,” Foxx posted on Instagram. “Just finished doing a record with the legendary @BarbraStreisand.”

“At the Ballet,” “Loving You,” “Pure Imagination,” “Losing My Mind,” and “Who Can I Turn To?” followed.

“We spent a lot of time on the vocals, trying them one day, picking the best ideas, trying them again another day, and so on, until we felt comfortable with the most honest readings,” Reitzas stated.

The virtual duet with Anthony Newley, who died in 1999, was Streisand's idea. “I’ve heard that David Bowie was very influenced by Tony Newley,” Streisand stated. “ I was doing Funny Girl and he was doing The Roar of the Greasepaint, and I met him that year and thought he was fantastic. Then we became friends.”

Newley even wrote a song about Streisand called “Too Much Woman.” When Streisand was reminded about it, she said, “I’m proud of that song. I’m proud that he wrote it for me.” 

The star of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Daisy Ridley, was in town for the Oscars, so she recorded her duet with Streisand Saturday, February 27th. Ridley explained to ABC Radio that her Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams arranged the meeting with Streisand. “J.J. told me she wants to meet me,” Ridley said. “I was like, ‘Sure…whatever you say.’ I went for tea at her house … She doesn’t know this, but I left and I was sobbing [with joy] in the car. That was actually one of the moments where I thought, like, ‘Life-change moment,’” she explained. “Just the opportunities that were kind of coming up.” Singing with Streisand in the studio was overwhelming for Daisy. “It was amazing!” she exclaimed. “She’s an incredible human being. And we went to go see her concert which was, like, bring-the-roof-down.”

Ridley Tweeted a photo of herself with Streisand at Woodshed on March 1, 2016.

Singing partners Alec Baldwin and Hugh Jackman were recorded at MSR Studios in New York; Chris Pine's vocals were done at Angel Studios, London; and Antonio Banderas worked at AIR Studios, London — his vocals were monitored remotely during the recording sessions by the Encore technical team.

Barbra’s “Loving You” partner, Patrick Wilson, explained on the Harry Connick, Jr. talk show that he was told “You can record your track in New York, or you can fly out and sing with her. Yeah, I'll take that one. That's the one I want to do.” Wilson described the duet with Streisand as “the gift that kept on giving” because he flew out to L.A. again to film the studio footage for the Electronic Press Kit; then he was able to sing the song live in concert with Streisand during her 2016 tour.

In early April 2016, ten of the songs’ final arrangements were recorded at the Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage in Culver City, Calif. with Bill Ross conducting the orchestra using movie streamers to keep in time with the score. (For “Anything You Can Do,” the team kept the original orchestral mock-up from the demo.)

Pictured, Left to Right: producer & arranger Walter Afanasieff, arranger William Ross, David Reitzas, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and guitarist Dean Parks.

Recording Encore wasn't always a high-tech effort — sometimes the iPhone voice memo app was used! “There were a couple of times where [Barbra] had a vocal idea that she had recorded into her iPhone,” Reitzas told Sound on Sound. “I would put these ideas in the session as markers so we could later record those ideas properly on her microphone, but when we later tried to re-record some of those ideas, she was like: ‘No, I like my reading of what I did on the iPhone better, so let's just use that.’ So you have to make it work. Obviously you use things like EQ and compression, or maybe you put a cymbal roll right before or after to try to trick the ear into not noticing or focusing on the sonic difference of the part I am trying to keep in there from the phone recording.”

Walter Afanasieff and Jim Brolin both recorded the voice of Zach on “At the Ballet” — until Barbra had a last-minute idea to ask Bradley Cooper to play the part. “He recorded his voice on his iPhone and sent that to us,” Reitzas said. Apparently, the low-resolution recording worked perfectly since the director's voice is supposed to be coming through a P.A. on the record.

Another surprise! It was announced on May 16, 2016 that Streisand would do a small, nine-city concert tour which would include songs from her forthcoming album, Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway. “Every ticket purchased online includes a CD of Streisand's new album,” it was announced.

Meanwhile, Streisand and Reitzas work together at Grandma's House to complete the final mixes of the songs. Final mastering was done at Gateway Mastering in Maine.

On June 10, 2016 Columbia Records announced the album would be released August 26th, 2016, shortly after her concert tour wrapped up in Toronto. Columbia had other exciting promotions for the album:  SiriusXM began airing its Streisand Channel again September 6 – October 3, 2016; Streisand appeared with Alec Baldwin on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, singing the Sondheim duet “The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened”; NPR streamed the album on its website; Streisand did an interview with NPR; Patrick Wilson interviewed Streisand onstage in New York for a special SiriusXM Town Hall; and Streisand did a handful of television interviews.

Below:  A separate house on Streisand's Malibu property, Grandma's House was set up for final mixing.