Nick Cordero's Final Concert Will Be Released As An Album On His Birthday
The curtain will soon rise again on Broadway’s Nick Cordero.
This week, Broadway Records announced the release of “Live Your Life,” a live recording of Cordero’s final concert run, in September. The album is slated to drop Sept. 19 to mark what would have been his 42nd birthday, and features appearances by guest artists, including Kathryn Gallagher and Zach Braff.
Cordero, a Tony Award nominee for his performance in 2014’s “Bullets Over Broadway,” died July 5 of coronavirus complications. Prior to his COVID-19 diagnosis, the actor and his musical director, Michael J. Moritz Jr., had planned to release “Live Your Life,” featuring songs from an April 2019 engagement at Feinstein’s/54 Below in New York, as an album.
Sadly, those plans never materialized. Instead, Broadway Records will unveil the album posthumously as a way to honor Cordero’s legacy, with proceeds benefiting his wife Amanda Kloots and their 1-year-old son Elvis.
In a heartfelt post on Instagram late Wednesday, Kloots said her husband “would be absolutely thrilled” to know that his legacy would live on.
“I’ve never seen my husband work so hard on something and be so nervous to perform,” she wrote. “I was so proud of him and absolutely loved watching him onstage these two nights. He created this show from scratch, choosing songs to tell a story ... his story.”
Moritz, an Emmy Award-winning producer who also worked on the cast albums of hit musicals “Hadestown” and “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” echoed those sentiments on Instagram, and said he was “honored to help preserve Nick’s beautiful soul for the world to hear.”
A listing of tracks wasn’t yet available, but Kloots said the album will feature “some Broadway tunes with fun guest stars, some pop, standards, a little Latin.” The encore is the album’s title track, an original song written by Cordero.
In addition to “Bullets Over Broadway,” Cordero originated roles in the musicals “Waitress” and “A Bronx Tale.” His television credits include “Blue Bloods” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
After contracting COVID-19, the actor was hospitalized for 95 days, during which he suffered a series of setbacks that included two mini-strokes and a leg amputation.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
