Broadway Bands Together for Song to Benefit Orlando LGBT Center
Members of the Broadway community have teamed up for a charity recording of “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” performed by a “We Are the World”-style supergoup of theater names and benefiting the victims and survivors of the Orlando shootings.
Led by Seth Rudetsky, the Broadway personality, SiriusXM DJ and and co-creator of musical “Disaster!,” and his husband, producer James Wesley, the initiative has lined up a slew of performers that includes Sara Bareilles, Sarah Jessica Parker, Audra McDonald, Sean Hayes, Zachary Levi, Jane Krakowski, Gloria Estefan, Whoopi Goldberg and newly crowned “Hamilton” Tony winners Lin-Manuel Miranda and Renee Elise Goldsberry. A 25-piece orchestra will back the recording, which will be exec produced by Rudetsky, Wesley and Van Dean, and produced by Michael J. Moritz Jr. and Michael Croiter.
The digital single will be sold for $1.99 on the Broadway Records website starting June 20, and available on iTunes soon after that. All proceeds will benefit the LGBT Center of Central Florida, which is located in Orlando.
The release of the single is part of a new charity initiative called Broadway for Orlando. The Broadway community was particularly shaken by the Florida shootings, which occurred less than 24 hours before the industry’s biggest awards bash, the Tony Awards. The ceremony that night opened with a sober acknowledgment of the tragedy.
Here’s the full roster of performers scheduled to participate in the recording, either in New York or remotely from L.A. or Miami: Sara Bareilles, Roger Bart, Kristen Bell, Wayne Brady, Matthew Broderick, Andréa Burns, Ann Hampton Callaway, Liz Callaway, Len Cariou, Paul Castree, Michael Cerveris, Joshua Colley, Lilla Crawford, Carmen Cusack, Darius de Haas, Fran Drescher, Gloria Estefan, Christopher Fitzgerald, Sutton Foster, Kimiko Glenn, Whoopi Goldberg, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Joel Grey, Sean Hayes, Heather Headley, Nina Hennessy, Megan Hilty, James Monroe Iglehart, Bill Irwin, Carole King, Jane Krakowski, Judy Kuhn, Nathan Lane, Anika Larsen, Jennifer Lewis, Zachary Levi, Jose Llana, Rebecca Luker, Andrea Martin, Audra McDonald, Idina Menzel, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brian Stokes Mitchell, , Jessie Mueller, Donna Murphy, Rosie O’Donnell, Kelli O’Hara, Rory O’Malley, Orfeh, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rosie Perez, Bernadette Peters, Billy Porter, Alice Ripley, Chita Rivera, Keala Settle, Kate Shindle, Christopher Sieber, Jennifer Simard, Will Swenson, Rachel Tucker, Tommy Tune, Jonah Verdon, Lillias White, Marissa Jaret Winokur, BD Wong and Tony Yazbeck.
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