Kerry Ellis & More Go Into Studio to Record 'Only You Can Save Mankind' Musical for Charity

Major West End singers are this month to record the songs from a new sci-fi musical "Only You Can Save Mankind", based on the international best-selling book by Terry Pratchett.

Kerry Ellis (Elphaba in both the West End and Broadway productions of "Wicked"), Sharon D. Clarke (who originated the role of the Killer Queen in "We Will Rock You", winning the What's On Stage Best Supporting Performance Award, and an Olivier nomination), Zubin Varla (Judas in the last West End production of "Jesus Christ Superstar") and Oliver Tompsett (currently playing Fiyero in "Wicked") are just some of the top singers who will go into the recording studio to record Only You Can Save Mankind - The Album. They will be joined by acclaimed cellist Zoe Martlew (BBC TV's "Maestro").

A full production of the musical will tour the UK in 2010, to be followed by a West End transfer.

Songs from Only You Can Save Mankind - The Album will be available to download individually or as an entire album from Terry Pratchett's news website - http://www.pjsmprints.com/news/index.html. If you buy the whole album, it includes a bonus podcast by Terry Pratchett.

The producers are donating 10% of the profits to the Alzheimer's Research Trust. In December 2007, Terry Pratchett revealed that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Since then, he has become Patron of The Alzheimer's Research Trust and has done a great deal of work to raise the profile of the disease and campaign for higher government research as well as making a sizeable donation himself.

"Only You Can Save Mankind", with music by young British composer Leighton James House (Lifts, A Brief Affair), and lyrics by Shaun McKenna (Lord of the Rings, Là Cava, Maddie and Lautrec), received rave reviews in a production at the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

As the mighty alien fleet from the very latest computer game thunders across the computer screen, Johnny prepares to blow them into the usual million pieces. And they send him a message: We surrender. They're not supposed to do that! They're supposed to die. And computer joysticks don't have 'Don't Fire' buttons. But it's only a game, or is it?

Only You Can Save Mankind - The Album will be produced by Neil Brock (David Garrett, Baaba Maal), with orchestrations by Tom Deering (Musical Director of the ‘Witches of Eastwick' UK tour with Marty Pellow) and the Mix Engineer is Rupert Coulson, who has previously worked with George Martin, The Rolling Stones, Robbie Williams, Paul McCartney, Craig Armstrong, Mark Knopfler and Danny Elfman.

Terry Pratchett is one of the most popular authors writing today and is the acclaimed creator of the Discworld series. The first Discworld novel, "The Colour of Magic", was published in 1983 and there are now 36 books in the series. The first Discworld novel for children, "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents", was published in 2001 and was awarded the Carnegie Medal. He has sold more than 60 million books worldwide and is the second most read author in UK after JK Rowling. He is now in the top 10 most read non-American writers in the US.