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_Note: NPR's First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. _ ------------------------- Barbra Streisand's cheekily entertaining and sometimes touching new album,
_Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway_, sounds like the skits and music of an extravagantly staged awards show without the awards. It also has the feel of a late-night gathering of show
people as they share favorite, and in some cases virtually unknown, tunes and scenes — at the home of a hostess who just happens to have an orchestra lying around.__ _Encore _is an amiable
Broadway/Hollywood mashup of vintage production values and modern casting. Like Streisand's 2014 album _Partners_, a collection of duets with male singers ranging from Billy Joel and
Lionel Richie to John Legend and John Mayer, this new record finds her in fine voice among a diverse range of pairings — and an opening trio, "At The Ballet" from _A Chorus Line,_
with Anne Hathaway and Daisy Ridley. A special edition available only at Target stores adds four Streisand solo tracks, including two of Stephen Sondheim's most moving numbers:
"Losing My Mind" from _Follies _and "Not A Day Goes By" from_ Merrily We Roll Along_. Another Sondheim song, "The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened" from the
lesser-known _Road Show, _demonstrates a couple of the album's strengths: unusual programming and easy chemistry with unexpected guests, in this case a gently swinging Alec Baldwin. The
sweeping "Any Moment Now," sung with Hugh Jackman, is from a stage adaptation by _A Chorus Line_ composer Marvin Hamlisch of the brilliant 1975 beauty-pageant mockumentary
_Smile_. And new words for "Anything You Can Do," with a funny Melissa McCarthy, allow Streisand to joke about herself and where she lives. (Did you know Streisand has a mall in
her house? She has a mall in her house.) "Does the world ever frighten you?" asks Seth MacFarlane before singing — and whistling — "Pure Imagination" from _Willy Wonka
And The Chocolate Factory_. Like actor Chris Pine, who joins Streisand for an affecting medley of "I'll Be Seeing You" and "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face,"
MacFarlane has a voice that could fit comfortably into any period of American crooning between the Eisenhower years and now. The album wraps with an inspirational dialogue between Streisand
and Jamie Foxx, which leads into their majestically paced, gospel-inflected "Climb Ev'ry Mountain." After the peak, the song and record finish with a flourish of brass and the
fading thunder of a bass drum, a grand Hollywood ending to another chapter of an epic — and unfinished — career. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.