For this Throwback Thursday, I will highlight one of my musicals which has not seen (at least not yet!) the light of day and yet has probably the most tuneful score of any musical of which I’ve had the pleasure of being a part.

Of course, I cannot take credit for the tunefulness, because that goes to the composer with whom I collaborated on the show – the supremely talented Paul Robert Barstch (1944-2016) – who unfortunately died some years back, but who was a great, talented friend and someone who, if he had a bit more exposure, could have had his name in lights on Broadway.

Through the miracle of cyber collaboration, I ended up “meeting” Paul on a musical forum online and I proposed that we work together on “Hello World”, which is a tongue-in-cheek adaption of the Greek myth of Pandora – who, in a very Eve-like way, opened up a forbidden box/vase and let “The Furies” out into the world, creating all sorts of sin and devastation.

In the show, one of the best songs is the title song, which Pandora sings when she is first created by the chief god Zeus and is examining the wonders of this new world around her with childlike awe – and for those who have an appreciation for classical Broadway, the song has a wonderfully tuneful feel that would have played terribly well on Broadway, circa 1965.

I will give you two versions…

A longer version, sung by a wonderful singer who is shamelessly unknown to me after the passage of a decade:

A slightly shorter (original) version, which is sung by yours truly as part of the first recorded piano demo of the score:

You can hear more of my piano demo from “Hello World” here!