Buena Vista Social Club, the much-lauded Havana-set Broadway musical inspired by the groundbreaking 1997 album of the same name, added another laurel to its credit today: The cast album, produced by Marco Paguia, Dean Sharenow & David Yazbek, took home the 2026 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.
Sharenow accepted the award during the Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony tonight, thanking Paguia, Yasbek and Broadway producer Orin Wolf along with the large ensemble cast, the many composers and performers who introduced the decades of Cuban music featured in BVSD — music, he noted, that “speaks around the world to audiences that don’t even speak Spanish.”
The win followed ceremony host Darren Criss and his Maybe Happy Ending costar Helen J. Shen’s performance on the Grammys stage by mere minutes; they did the title number from their Tony-winning musical, a hint — a false one, it turned out — that Maybe Happy Ending would following through on its recent frontrunner status by taking tonight’s trophy.
Not that BVSD could ever have been considered anything like an underdog. The production won five Tony Awards last June, including one for the amazing Natalie Venetia Belcon, who won the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. A special Tony was awarded to the Buena Vista Social Club onstage band.
Still, most informal polls and theater community chatter going into the ceremony put Maybe Happy Ending — the winner of last June’s Best Musical Tony — in the lead for victory tonight, with Death Becomes Her a close second, in large part because both of those shows, and, as such, both of the cast recordings, feature new and original scores (not to mention wonderful performances that were embraced by critics and beloved by audiences).
In the case of Maybe Happy Ending, the score was written by Hue Park and Will Aronson; Death Becomes Her featured music by Noel Carey and Julia Mattison.
Like BVSC, this year’s other Grammy nominees feature music that was not written specifically for the Broadway stagings that opened over the past year, as good as those stagings might have been. The Gypsy revival starring Audra McDonald featured, of course, the classic work of Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim. Just In Time, the Bobby Darin jukebox musical starring the current king of Broadway Jonathan Groff, is a rousing collection of classic ’50s and ’60s pop tunes originally recorded way back when by Darin, Connie Francis, Sandra Dee and others.
And despite whatever pro-original Grammy bias might be thought to exist, powerful ear-pleasing re-interpretations of vintage songs can more than compensate for any such preference. Last year’s cast album winner suggests the pro-original voter camp couldn’t stop jukebox musical Hell’s Kitchen, with its energizing score of Alicia Keyes songs and hits, from taking the top spot over original scores by Ingrid Michaelson (The Notebook); Zach Chance, Jonathan Clay & Justin Levine (The Outsiders); and Shaina Taub (Suffs). (Also nominated last year were revivals of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along and William F. Brown-Charlie Smalls’ The Wiz.)
Category winners of the previous two years included an original score (2024’s Some Like It Hot by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman) and a revival (2023’s Into The Woods revival by Sondheim and James Lapine).
Tonight’s BVSC win keeps Criss from inching closer to EGOT status: Had Maybe Happy Ending won, he would have been just an Oscar short of the rarified quadruple honor, having already won the Tony for best lead actor in Happy Ending and a Primetime Emmy in 2018 for his performance as spree killer Andrew Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.
And BVSC‘s Gypsy shut-out also keeps the late theater icon Sondheim from adding to his impressive roster of Grammy victories: He currently holds a record six wins for Musical Theater Album: Company (1971), A Little Night Music (1974), Sweeney Todd (1980), Sunday in the Park with George (1985), Into the Woods (1989) and Passion (1995). Record producer Thomas Z. Shepard, whose credits include various Sondheim cast albums, is tied with the great composer with six wins in this category.
But a note on that Sondheim Grammy record: He’s credited with six wins, but didn’t the cast album for the 2022 Into the Woods revival win? And didn’t the 2004 Gypsy revival do the same? Yes and yes, but Grammy wins for revivals go to performers and producers, with composers only joining the fun if they contribute a percentage of new material to the new recordings. So even if the McDonald revival of Gypsy had won this year, the victory wouldn’t have pushed Sondheim into record-breaking territory, at least not officially and certainly not without plenty of internal theater community arguments over statistics, arcana and all the other what-ifs Broadway aficionados so love to chew over.
Below, see the list of this year’s nominees for Best Musical Theater Album. (Note: Composers listed in parentheses are not award-eligible.)
And below that, read excerpts from Deadline’s Broadway reviews of the shows with cast albums nominated this year. (Note: These are not reviews of the albums but of the Broadway productions. The selected excerpts focus on scores and performances.)
The 2026 Nominees For Best Musical Theater Album:
WINNER: Buena Vista Social Club (Original Broadway Cast)
Marco Paguia, Dean Sharenow & David Yazbek, producers
Death Becomes Her (Original Broadway Cast)
Taurean Everett, Megan Hilty, Josh Lamon, Christopher Sieber, Jennifer Simard & Michelle Williams, principal vocalists; Noel Carey, Sean Patrick Flahaven, Julia Mattison & Scott M. Riesett, producers; Noel Carey & Julia Mattison, composers/lyricists
Gypsy (2024 Broadway Cast)
Danny Burstein, Kevin Csolak, Audra McDonald, Jordan Tyson & Joy Woods, principal vocalists; David Caddick, Andy Einhorn, David Lai & George C. Wolfe, producers (Jule Styne, composer; Stephen Sondheim, lyricist)
Just In Time (Original Broadway Cast)
Emily Bergl, Jonathan Groff, Erika Henningsen, Gracie Lawrence & Michele Pawk, principal vocalists; Derik Lee, Andrew Resnick & Bill Sherman, producers (Bobby Darin, composer & lyricist)
Maybe Happy Ending (Original Broadway Cast)
Marcus Choi, Darren Criss, Dez Duron & Helen J. Shen, principal vocalists; Deborah Abramson, Will Aronson, Ian Kagey & Hue Park, producers; Hue Park, lyricist; Will Aronson, composer & lyricist
DEADLINE BROADWAY REVIEWS By Greg Evans:
BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB
“…[I]t’s easy to put aside most reservations about the book, the character arcs, the predictable plots, when the music and the dancing (choreography by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck) take over — and take over they do, often. The onstage band sizzles — Marco Paguia (Piano, Music Director), David Oquendo (Guitar), Gustavo Schartz (Bass), Hery Paz (Woodwinds), Eddie Venegas (Trombone), Jesus Ricardo (Trumpet), Javier Díaz (Percussion), Mauricio Herrera (Percussion) and Román Diaz (Percussion) … The songs — many from the actual Ry Cooder-produced 1997 album, and some later additions — are without exception stirring (and though performed in Spanish, non-Spanish speakers will have no trouble following the story). Among the standouts: ‘El Carretero,’ ‘Candela,’ ‘Dos Gardenias’ and ‘Chan Chan.'”
JUST IN TIME
“Just in Time is front-loaded with the best, or at least most recognizable, songs in the first act, leaving the second half less hummable and stacked with the more melodramatic, treacly and standard-jukebox book bits, but all of that matters little. Groff, assisted by a terrific trio of singer-dancers (Christine Cornish, Julia Grondin, Valeria Yamin) who back him up through the years and many, many fashions and dance styles, is tireless and captivating throughout the show. Long known for the copious amounts of spit and sweat he releases during a performance — he jokingly acknowledges his “wetness” early in the show — Groff embodies the give-it-all stage style embodied by Minnelli in her prime, and with Just In Time we watch as, song-by-song and dance-by-dance, a stage performer of the highest order blossoms.”
GYPSY
“What this Gypsy does well … it does very well. Mostly that means the score — a surefire collection of the best classic stage musicals have to offer. ‘Small World’ makes the absolute best of the disparate styles of McDonald and Burstein, a delightful melding; ‘If Mama Was Married,’ the wistful duet between Louise and June … And finally there is the inevitable ‘Rose’s Turn,’ that very definition of the showstopping 11 o’clock number in which Rose’s pent-up ambitions and decades of resentments come roaring to the fore. [McDonald] plays down the soprano trills successfully enough, but in their place she chews more scenery than might be necessary. There’s no denying her power, here and throughout this revival. Her Rose is her Rose (just as — let’s not forget — her Billie Holiday was her Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill) — and who are we to do anything but treasure its fragrances?”
DEATH BECOMES HER
“Mattison and Carey have concocted a knock-’em-dead collection of killer songs that send up show tune convention while celebrating each and every one with love and care. From the razzle-dazzle of ‘For The Gaze’ and Viola’s spooky ‘If You Want Perfection’ and on to the anthemic ‘Alive Forever,’ the songs are pure ear candy, the lyrics smart and sharp. Sieber gets his own big number with a drunken, falling-apart bit of desperation called ‘The Plan,’ while Williams, whose sinewy R&B pop vocals are pleasing even without the assured belting capacity of her costars, gets her best moment in the slinky ‘Don’t Say I Didn’t (Warn You).'”
MAYBE HAPPY ENDING
“Directed by Michael Arden, showing a flare for comedy and lightheartedness amid the desolation only hinted at in his fine, recent revival of Parade, Maybe Happy Ending is buoyed not only by the endearing performances but by a score (music by Will Aronson, lyrics by Hue Park) that effectively makes a case that the genre known as Contemporary Musical Theater still has plenty of joy and pleasures to offer.”
English (US) ·