NEW YORK (Top40 Charts/ Razor & Tie) - In last night's announcement ceremony for the 51st annual Grammy Awards, Razor & Tie Entertainment received three nominations. Joan Baez's album, DAY AFTER TOMORROW was recognized for Contemporary Folk/Americana Album, "Peaches En Regalia" from the album ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA was recognized for Best Rock Instrumental Performance and IN THE HEIGHTS was recognized for Best Musical Show Album.
Celebrating her 50th year in the music industry, Joan Baez has received eight gold albums, seven Grammy nominations and in 2006 was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. DAY AFTER TOMORROW (Bobolink/Razor & Tie), Baez's 24th studio album (first album since 2003), was produced by last year's winner in the Contemporary Folk/Americana category, Steve Earle. DAY AFTER TOMORROW has received universal critical acclaim, described as "a sound of understated elegance (MOJO)", a quite, wisdom-filled work (Huffington Post)," on which "Baez has never never sounded wiser, or more deeply human (Boston Globe)." Baez resumes her US tour in February 2009.
The ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA DVD (Strobosonic/Razor & Tie Entertainment) features the astounding music of the late Frank Zappa played by an expert ensemble led by his son, Dweezil, an accomplished musician in his own right. A critically-acclaimed live tour, in 2006, two ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA shows were pristinely filmed and recorded (in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA, respectively) to capture the experience. The result is a double-DVD set, a single audio album, and a limited edition fanpack (featuring the two-DVD set and three CDs containing the entire audio content, totaling 270 minutes). Produced by Pierre and Francois Lamoureux for Strobosonic, the DVDs feature over three hours of performances of Dweezil's "rocking teenage combo", including previous 2006 tour special guests: Steve Vai, Napoleon Murphy Brock and Terry Bozzio. Rolling Stone proclaimed, "ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA is totally truth in advertising: a fantastic band led by guitarist Dweezil Zappa, dedicated to performing the music of his late father with exacting precision."
In addition, Razor & Tie distributed label Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight picks up a nomination in the Best Musical Show Album category, for IN THE HEIGHTS. Ghostlight Records has emerged as the standard bearer on the Broadway music scene. Their team is relentless in their efforts to promote the music of the most innovative new voices on the Broadway scene, and to preserve the music of past productions.
Ghostlight's recent releases of the OCRs for Tony winners IN THE HEIGHTS and PASSING STRANGE, as well as their single release featuring the winner of MTV's LEGALLY BLONDE THE MUSICAL competition, have brought the label acclaim for their innovative marketing techniques and their efforts to reach the next generation of Broadway music fans via iTunes, music videos and more. Coverage has ranged from Rolling Stone to USA TODAY to The New York Times, from Blender Magazine to Playbill and much more.
