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Interview: Caroline O’Connor Brings her Inner Showgirl to the West End

23 Aug

Broadway Baby: Caroline O’Connor signals her return to London at the Sondheim Prom

Carolin O'Connor's The Showgirl Within hits the Garrick Theatre on 27th September

I recently interviewed Caroline O’Connor for a major feature on how to perform the work of John Kander and Fred Ebb in The Singer magazine. At the time, she was touring in Chicago in Australia, clearly having a whale of a time as brittle Velma Kelly – “Like a cat falling down the wall, clawing at it just to hang on,” as she described the character – and eager to speak about the impact the work of these titans of musical theatre has had on her successful career.

Caroline was born in the UK – in Oldham, in fact, a town that has produced its fair share of theatrical talent over the years – but her family moved to Australia when she was still a small child, and ever since she has split her professional life between the two countries, with the occasional Broadway foray thrown in for good measure. Thanks to the big Chicago revival and other successful projects, Oz has had by far the better deal during the last couple of years. So with all due respect to her fans down under, the news that Caroline is bringing her new one-woman show, The Showgirl Within, to London (at the Garrick Theatre from 27th September) means that for a little while at least, we can reclaim this firecracker of a star for our own.

Her “Broadway Baby” at the Stephen Sondheim Prom gave a taste of the dynamism we can expect from the show. But it would be a huge surprise if Kander and Ebb didn’t loom equally large in the programme. In the Singer article, Caroline shared centre stage with a host of other musical theatre luminaries, including her heroine Chita Rivera, Karen Ziemba, Joel Grey and Brent Barrett. As a result, I could only use a fraction of the insight and enthusiasm she provided over the course of our interview. So the impending arrival of The Showgirl Within is a great excuse for sharing the conversation in full. Here it is.

Sally Bowles is so iconic among the great female musical roles that even understudying the star in the faint hope that you might get on for a matinee once in a blue moon is too good an opportunity for a young actress to miss. That was certainly Caroline O’Connor’s view in 1986 when, towards the end of her stint in the chorus of Me and My Girl, she was cast as a Kit Kat girl in Cabaret with understudy duties. It required all her pleading and acting skills to earn an early release from her contract to take the job.

“I was dance captain on Me and My Girl, so I had to go and beg my boss to let me go,” she says. “I think I shed tears, even! I said I’d train my replacement without any pay, I wanted the Cabaret job so badly. I’ve never been so excited in my life, being cast in something, because of its reputation. Gillian Lynn was directing, and of course she was so well known at the time because of Cats. Anyway, I was able to take it, and we took the show on the road then took it into the Strand Theatre.

“It was an amazing experience, maybe not the most renowned production ever, but just to get to do that music every night… Also, there is the depth of the story, it’s so incredibly moving. And that’s where I met my husband, too, so it’s had a big impact on my life. We opened on the Tuesday night in London and I went on to play Sally Bowles the following Saturday matinee, so it was a pretty fast intro to play that role that everybody was so familiar with. I remember them saying, “You don’t have to go on because we’ve only been in town for five days and you haven’t even had an understudy call yet.” But I insisted: ‘No, let me at it! I can’t wait to get on.’

Nobody who plays Sally is immune to the shadow cast by Liza Minnelli’s Oscar-winning performance in the film, an experience that gave Caroline her first hint of how fixed some audience’s preconceptions can be.

“When I went on to play Sally, my agent was in the audience and behind him were a couple of American tourists,” she says. “And of course I played the role with an English accent, as that’s what Sally had. And they hated the show, whining all the way through. At the end, as they were putting on their coats, one turned to the other and said, ‘As for that Sally Bowles, well she didn’t even try to do an American accent.’ I thought it was hilarious. You can appreciate it because of the popularity of the film but at the same time, I was a little bit offended because I’d put so much effort into my beautiful pseudo English accent.”

That little baptism aside, Caroline is quick to nail the old cliché that Americans don’t get irony – particularly when it comes to Kander and Ebb.

“You read their shows and listen to them, and think that these are two people who really understand irony and are able to include it in their work. That tongue-in-cheek referring to the general public – as the Emcee does in Cabaret, and Billy Flynn and all the other characters do in Chicago. They look at the audience and they’re saying, ‘You know what I’m talking about.’ It’s quite incredible.

“Chicago is such a beautifully written piece of work. Here in Sydney it’s been wonderfully well received. It’s only been 11 years since the show was last here in Australia, and yet it is garnering great reviews and is doing fantastic business. So again it’s found its niche.”

Casual theatre-goers are often surprised to discover that the creators of Cabaret were also responsible for Chicago, and a host of other great work besides. For Caroline, there is always great satisfaction in spreading the word, particularly when it comes to their lesser-known pieces. She first met them in person during the short-lived 1988 production of The Rink at the Cambridge Theatre, where she was understudying Diane Langton in the role of Angel.

“Because Angel is such a demanding part to sing, and Diane preferred not do all the performances, I was playing the matinees,” she recalls. “That meant I was actually contracted to do some performances and I could revel in the extraordinary experience: the storyline, the concept, the humour in their work. It makes it so easy to play as a performer. It’s so beautifully written – they write so well for men, but I just think the way they write for women is mesmerising, a bit like Sondheim. They seem to understand us so well, especially older or troubled women! And when the show came off, there was an outcry because it was such a wonderful piece of work. No-one could believe it.”

Caroline was fascinated by Kander and Ebb’s approach to the London production. They weren’t interested in resting on the laurels of The Rink’s Broadway success.

“What was extraordinary was that they wanted to cut a number at the end called ‘All the Children in a Row’, which I think is a brilliantly written song,” she says. “And Diane Langton had to pretty much audition to have it kept in the show. They wanted to write something new, and [director] Paul Kerrison was so determined to keep it in that he asked Diane to sing it for them, give it everything she’d got. Which made it really interesting – to think that these writers, who were so brilliant, questioned their work and thought maybe it wasn’t quite right. For me all the other stuff was great fun, there were great moments to sing but as a performer, to go out and do that song is so exciting, because it’s like telling the most wonderful story. I remember sitting in the stalls watching this happen and thinking, Oh my God, they’re really not sure. And they’re willing to say no, let’s do something else.

“I also got to do a concert version of Zorba, which is very rarely performed. We were doing Chicago back in 1998-9 here in Australia, and John Dietrich, who was playing Billy Flynn, is a huge Kander and Ebb fan. And because he’d always loved Zorba he decided to produce a concert version of the show, which we did as a late nighter for two nights. It was incredible how many people were interested in coming to see that, because it was such a rarity. I’d no idea, I was a little bit in the dark as far as Zorba was concerned, but I thought it was a fantastic piece of work, too. Probably not as commercial as some of the other pieces, but really interesting.”

Caroline says Kander and Ebb’s work places unique demands on the performer. The choreography, so much of it devised and influenced by the great Bob Fosse, means that you are rarely simply singing a number. Your whole body and imagination is engaged. And it takes a certain calibre of artist to bring that to the stage.

“When you look at the sort of people that were cast in their shows for so many years, the quality of their work, what they can do, their versatility, and not just that they can dance a little or belt or whatever, you can tell what’s required,” she continues. “If you can execute a Kander and Ebb show eight times a week for a long period of time, then you should give yourself a little pat on the back. It’s quite demanding and compared to some other shows – especially the elements that Bob Fosse brought with Cabaret and Chicago – It’s a big ask.

“You have to get the right type of person that’s going to give it all it deserves – and they’re the sort of people you want on the stage: the Gwen Verdons, the Chita Riveras, the Liza Minnellis, the Karen Ziembas. They’re my idols. I got to do the anniversary concert of Chicago in New York and in London, and for me to able to share the stage with Chita Rivera – whether it was just the bows or even being on the same bill – was extraordinary. The fact that she still gets on stage and performs live after all those years of doing eight shows a week, you can see why they held her in such high esteem. She is just so good at what she does. I recently watched a clip of her in Nine on Youtube, and she is so mesmerising. This is a woman that’s been doing it for 200 years, and she’s still as enthusiastic and magnetic as she was.”

Caroline tells a couple of poignant stories about sharing the bill with Rivera that encapsulate the ripples of respect and love generated by association with the creators of great work.

Caroline O’Connor performs “All That Jazz”

“We were rehearsing Chicago at the Ambassadors Theatre and I did “Velma Takes the Stand”, so I’d just watched Chita do “All That Jazz”. Just hearing that voice that I’d listened to on cassette since about 1978 for real was incredible. And after I’d finished I was walking around the back of the auditorium and she called me over with her finger – ‘Come here!’ and I walked towards her, and she said, ‘I would love to teach you the original choreography.’ I couldn’t believe it, it was such an incredible compliment because she thought I could do it. It was so exciting. And you can see why Kander and Ebb wanted to work with people like her, because they could bring out the best in their work.

“It’s terribly sad that Fred Ebb’s gone. When we did the anniversary concert in New York, we were standing in the wings waiting to go on for the bows, and Chita didn’t notice me watching, but there was a photo of Fred Ebb on a card in one of the offices, and she picked it up off the shelf and kissed it before she went on. I felt so moved and honoured to have actually seen that, the appreciation that she had. It was beautiful.”

Caroline has played both Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly during her career, but it’s brittle, complex Velma who has occupied her most recently, as she returned to a role she last performed in 1998.

“I took it as a compliment that they didn’t change the choreography!” she laughs. “But we’ve been doing a long run, more than 30 weeks. Physically it’s demanding – because of Fosse’s influence. It’s a totally different style of dance, an incredibly particular way of performing. It’s not just the physicalisation of doing the moves, it’s the intensity and style, and it’s quite tiring.

“When you’ve had a ballet background [Caroline’s early ambitions were classical], all of a sudden your muscles hurt in a different way. You get pains in an area that if you were doing a de Mille or Jerome Robins choreography, wouldn’t be the same. Sometimes they can be very large movements, sometimes tiny gestures that say a 1000 words. And just the intensity of that, moving one finger, can be exhausting. And there are all these people who keep the bible going: ‘No, you don’t move the whole wrist, just circle the finger.’ The concentration that goes into that is really ridiculous but it just goes to show how much impact it has, for the performer to execute it and the audience to appreciate it.

“And it’s not like singing “If You Knew Suzy”. It’s pretty full-on, big belting numbers and intensity. Having to be the character up front, not just singing a lovely soprano song and sounding sweet and pretty. You have to give it everything you’ve got, every ounce of intention – if you’re fighting for your life as in “I am my Own Best Friend”, you’re fighting for supremacy. The audience has to leave at the end of Act One thinking, I wonder who’s going to win.

Caroline says a long run in a show like Chicago brings its own rewards, and she has never tired of it.

“The piece is so powerful, I’ve never been bored with it, because the audience isn’t. And you feed off the audience. I do make sure that I remind myself every night how lucky I am to be able to do it, and that I’ve got everything to lose. Because the character of Velma is interesting. Her journey goes downhill. She’s like a cat falling down the wall, clawing to hang on, before she comes back up at the end. I just remind myself that my job is to tell that story and it’s easy because of the quality of the work.

“Kander and Ebb are probably my biggest influence as a performer, and I hope they continue to be so because I’ve still got my eyes on Kiss of the Spider Woman! Isn’t it tremendous that you can look at a composer and writer, and think, I could have a lifetime career just looking at your work, because it suits my voice and my personality. I feel really blessed that there is this work out there I can relate to and appreciate. “

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Concert review: Eddi Reader, 9th August, Snape Proms, Suffolk

16 Aug

“Dragonflies”: a number from Eddi Reader’s most recent album Love is the Way

"Love is the Way": Eddi Reader's most recent album formed the backbone of her gig at Snape

If you think there’s a more abundantly gifted British female singer than Eddi Reader gigging and recording today, please tell me who she is. The range of ‘voices’ and styles that Reader embraced during a hugely appreciated two-hour+ set, part of this year’s Snape Proms season at Snape Maltings Concert Hall, was extraordinary. She bucked convention at every turn, barely tolerating the notion of an interval, and dismissing the ritual of the encore completely because she – rightly – would rather fit in a couple of extra songs for her and the audience’s pleasure.

The maverick qualities that must make Reader a music marketeer’s nightmare were on show in abundance as she veered from pop to folk to Burns to Piaf and Doris Day, supported by an equally versatile band that included drummer Roy Dodds, Alan Kelly on the accordian, writing partner and guitarist Boo Hewerdine, and life partner and ukelele virtuoso John Douglas.

The recent album Love is the Way formed the backbone of the evening, interwoven with older work and several of Reader’s unforgettable interpretations of Robert Burns poems. She sprung a surprise at virtually every turn as she peppered the playlist with anecdotes and explanations, setting the scene for each number with an almost throw-away nonchalance that belied the intensity and commitment of her vocal delivery. Old favourites like “Simple Soul” – inspired, she pointed out with grim humour, by Reader’s experience of living with an alcoholic – and “What You Do With What You’ve Got” – with the input of guest artist and pianist Thomas Dolby – complemented the clarity and beauty of new work: “Silent Bells”, the delightful, poignant “Dandelion”, the ode to “New York City” and a delicious left-field interpretation of the Cahn/Styne standard “It’s Magic”, which Reader delivered as her late mother Jean, evoking the volatile atmosphere of a Glasgow tenement party with the diffident star turn at its centre.

Tale followed tale. So vividly does Reader paint scenes that the well-oiled Brenda sprang to life in front of us. Memorably vocal during a gig back home in Irvine with her “Sing ‘Perfect’, Eddi” during the sublime Burns poem “Aye Waukin-O”, Brenda was saved from a couple of fast-approaching plods and a few hours in the cooler when Reader got her up on stage for the chorus, and for her trouble was rewarded with a request to sign Brenda’s bra. Less prosaically, we were also treated to stories of Burns’ lusty escapades ahead of a haunting “Ae Fond Kiss”.

Reader herself is a fascinating, even disconcerting presence on stage. Occasionally restless, picking up and replacing her guitar as if undecided quite what she’s going to do next, she describes the harmonies with her hands as she sings, utterly committed to the honesty of the sound she is making.

Like Brenda, we got our “Perfect”, the Fairground Attraction hit that first brought Eddi Reader’s voice to a wide public attention back in 1989. Reader hung on to her guitar and delivered a swinging, jubilant acoustic version to close the first half. For me, though, the highlight in an evening of brilliance was a sudden, completely unexpected, a capella “La Vie en Rose” which hushed the hall.

The only thing missing – and you can’t have everything, even in a set of this quality – was her epic take on Gene Pitney’s “Town Without Pity”. If you also missed it, here’s a reminder of Eddi Reader, the consummate torch-singer:

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Great Cabaret Blogs; Barb Jungr’s BBC Breakfast Interview Finally Online; and Mari Wilson Singing Sweetly in LA

16 Aug

Barb Jungr serves a breakfast treat with a “Wichita Lineman” to remember

During the last few weeks I’ve been introduced to some great female singer- and cabaret-related blogs around the world. They’re all on my blog roll but I’d like to introduce them properly to Art of the Torch Singer readers.

Cabaret Confessional is a great global resource, currently posting daily about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and eagerly anticipating Barb Jungr’s upcoming Australian tour (as well as her Edinburgh appearances this week).

CabaretDC is Michael Miyazaki’s excellent blog about all things cabaret in the Washington area – clearly a fertile hunting ground for the genre – and more widely across the Eastern states. This is an indispensible blog for anyone who is passionate about the art of cabaret, written by someone who clearly lives and breathes the subject. There is a great interview archive, Diva 5+1, which includes – naturally – Barb Jungr, Ute Lemper and Liz Callaway, among many others.

New York-based Stu Hamstra’s Cabaret Hotline Online is another must-read blog, packed with news about the global cabaret scene, reviews and articles written by a man who must also have a passion for the genre in his DNA.

Finally, Girl Singers is journalist Doug Boynton’s wonderfully eclectic, informed reviews blog, in which he wonders freely across the landscape of contemporary female artists and introduces their work with great context and cross-references.

Speaking of Barb Jungr – which I frequently do, and make no apologies for that – it’s great to see her insightful interview with BBC Breakfast, from March 2010, finally online. Watch how she kicks the “covers” argument out of court – and delivers an a capella “Wichita Lineman” to entranced presenters Bill and Sian that is simply a great moment of live, artifice-free performance.

Getting There: Mari Wilson singing sweeter than ever at the Wrecking View movie benefit in California

Mari Wilson’s recent appearance singing at the Wrecking View movie benefit was a great warm-up for her upcoming Hollywood gig at Cabaret at the Castle on 22nd August. Lucky California, to get the chance to see and hear how one of our finest song stylists – and Neasden’s greatest export –  just keeps getting better. British fans will be able to catch up with Mari when she brings her one-woman musical The Love Thing to the Leicester Square Theatre in November.

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A Song Revisited: “Dreams” by Grace Slick

31 Jul
“Dreams”: a video very much of its time, but what a great song

Dreams: Grace Slick's 1980 album, with a title track that's come hurtling back into my life

What makes a song come hurtling back up from the depths of the memory? Just occasionally, something that defined a time in your life – a few hours, a week, a month – but that you haven’t given a second thought to for years, decades, rears up from the past with all its old power. The response, the feelings, the connection you made with that particular piece of music, with its potent combination of voice, lyric, melody – above all, the ‘sound’ it made in your life – clout you with all of their original force. It’s extraordinary, like travelling in time.

I don’t know what made me search for Grace Slick’s “Dreams” on YouTube the other day. It was a random, almost unthinking act. A bit of displacement therapy to postpone some mundane task. But the great thing is that I did it. And ever since, the song has been playing on a continuous loop in my head. I was astonished and touched by its familiarity, the words returning effortlessly to mind after three decades, those epic cadences just as thrilling, and Slick’s fascinating, textured, contralto resonating through an apocolyptic yet compelling vision of the terrors of the night.

“Dreams” was the title track of Slick’s 1980 solo album. I remember the first time I heard it on BBC Radio 1 – how much more adventurous its playlist was in those days! – and how completely enthralled I was by its symphonic qualities, and by Slick’s blistering vocal attack. At that stage – and for a long time afterwards – I knew nothing about her, that pedigree steeped in the legendary psychedelia of Jefferson Airplane in its various guises. I just knew that this was a voice that commanded attention, that was hypnotic in the way it charged on with something that sounded like controlled rage, almost fighting with the majestic beauty of the song’s arrangement. At least, looking back, I think that’s what I thought. Only probably less specifically. I was only 18, after all. I just knew what I liked, and there wasn’t a lot of it about in those days.

Fortunately, “Dreams” got a plenty of airplay, none of which helped to make the song a hit, although it meant I got to hear it a lot. I suppose that gives it cult status today, because it obviously has a lot of fans out there. Sean Delaney’s lyrics paint a wonderfully lurid picture of the sinister parade that storms, tantalises, disturbs and ravages sleep. I now understand, of course, that the album was at heart a concept project that explored the AA 12-step programmes, Slick having recently emerged from a prolonged stay in rehab.

“To be honest, doing solo albums scared the shit out of me; making music was no longer fun, it was nerve-wracking pressure,” she wrote in her absorbing 1998 autobiography, Somebody to Love? “For someone who couldn’t handle a quarter cup of coffee without wondering where the quaaludes were, working solo was just a couple of steps short of flinging myself off a 150-foot diving board.”

The really odd thing is that I’ve only heard the rest of the album in the last few days. The song “Dreams” was always enough in the completeness of the story, the vision it rolled out. But when I found the video on YouTube (a word about that: it’s very much of its time! Slick looks hard and big-haired, her eyes demonic in a Myra Hindley-ish way, but she is still riveting, a performance artist through and through. The Dolly Parton wig is a stroke of genius) and found myself transported back – not to an actual experience but to a sense of my teenaged self – I wanted to know more about the album. A search for MP3 downloads was fruitless. So it was off to Amazon.

In her book, Slick points out that her solo albums didn’t sell. That she didn’t tour on the back of them, which was a mistake. Well, Grace, thanks to a Japanese import and a rather silly amount of money, Dreams just notched up another royalty and I hope you get it. Because it’s a marvellous album, an explosion of musical references that’s surely overdue for a release. It’s gone straight onto my smartphone and I’m just letting the stories it tells play out on the commute, building a complex picture around a song that’s come back into my life like an old friend.

I know that there was much more to Slick’s music than this, and I’ve since discovered the wonders of “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit”, and the unique contribution that arresting voice made to a seminal period in rock history. And even the commercial hits of Starship – Slick has since made no secret of her lack of interest in them –  have the ability to generate a nostalgia for the 1980s, powered by her unmistakable vocals.

Grace Slick at 70: a successful artist with the presence of a tribal elder

She stopped performing at 49, believing that rock stars over 50 should stop inflicting their ageing presence on an audience. That’s a shame because from the sound of it, she could still knock seven bells out of her iconic numbers – including “Dreams”. Today, she is a successful artist, renowned for her work in acrylic, particularly studies of her rock star contemporaries, many of whom didn’t have her resilience and instinct for self-preservation. In interviews she appears a wise elder of the global tribe: fiercely intelligent, plain-spoken, as uncompromising as ever, warm, compassionate and very funny, a mane of white hair pulled tightly back so that her interrogator gets the full benefit of that frank, experience-laden gaze. More power to her. And huge thanks for “Dreams”.

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CD Review – Monica Mancini: I’ve Loved These Days

25 Jul

Monica Mancini proves her musical pedigree at the Montreux Jazz Festival

I've Loved These Days: a cherry-picked playlist of rare quality

It isn’t often that I’m tempted to call an album “flawless”. There is usually a track or two that misses the mark, doesn’t connect with the whole, has a slight hint of beating the deadline about it – good enough but not quite in the zone. But Monica Mancini’s I’ve Loved These Days has such a calm sense of completeness about it that I’ve found myself staring at the Bose in astonishment. During the first listen, round about an absorbing reinvention of “How Can I Be Sure” – a number I’ve only ever associated with Dusty Springfield, despite David Cassidy’s best efforts – I actually caught myself thinking, “They really don’t make records like this any more.”

And to be honest, in the best possible way, there is a strong retro feel about the whole thing, not least because Mancini’s phrasing and diction are so effortlessly cool. You don’t miss a single lyric – and how often does that happen these days? Every word is considered, explored and offered up with an honesty that brings to mind female pop singers of the highest calibre: Karen Carpenter or Dionne Warwick at their instinctive best.

The choice of songs also adds to the sense of a time slip. Mancini has cherry-picked a 1960s playlist of rare quality – and in many cases enlisted the help of their originators: Jackson Browne plays guitar and sings backing vocals on “These Days”; Stevie Wonder’s unmistakable harmonica burnishes “Blame it on the Sun”; and Brian Wilson – vocally ageless – features on an intriguingly pared-down “God Only Knows”, giving Mancini the chance to show her mettle against a taste of those legendary Beach Boy harmonies.

These collaborations are testament to Mancini’s musical pedigree, as the daughter of Henry Mancini, the composer behind some of the most iconic film soundtracks of the 20th century. Many of the songwriters she honours here were her father’s peers and clearly exerted a profound influence on her own musical development. Indeed, she calls them her “musical heroes” and offers I’ve Loved These Days as a discovery of what their songs continue to reveal. In that sense, the album makes an interesting comparison with Barb Jungr’s The Men I Love. They both raise a musical toast to Paul Simon, for example: Jungr with “My Little Town” and Mancini with “American Tune”.

Although this album isn’t exclusively American in content – there is a poignant take on the Lennon/McCartney number “I’ll Follow the Sun” – an undercurrent of oblique commentary on the modern emotional landscape of her homeland occasionally ripples to the surface, particularly in the compassion of the Fran Landesman classic “Ballad of the Sad Young Men”, Billy Joel’s “I’ve Loved These Days”, and the flute-dusted beauty of Janice Ian’s “Joy”.

The arrangements are spare, acoustic and almost regal in their simplicity. Mancini clearly didn’t want to simply do an all-purpose album of cover versions. Instead, these are gleaming reinterpretations in which the lyrics take centre stage. Producer Phil Ramone – who had a hand in the original versions of many of these songs – has brought all his skill to the mixing desk, giving Mancini’s fluent, elegant vocal line all the air and space it needs to soar above the tasteful, sympathetic arrangements of Jorge Calandrelli. “I’ve Loved These Days” is a breath of fresh air in a musical climate that is so often hell-bent on over embellishment and extravagance. Perfect.

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CD Review: Emilie Simon, The Big Machine

11 Jul

Rainbow: a track from Emilie Simon’s new album, The Big Machine

The Big Machine: a new musical vision of an iconic city

A few weeks ago I berated PRs who use the “New Kate Bush” tag to try and snatch a bit of space for the latest quirky singer in a niche that, despite the heralding of numerous would-bes, has only ever really been occupied by one talent. Here, for one night only, I’ll eat my words.

Emilie Simon, a French electro-pop singer and composer (or “sonic auteur” according to the slightly pretentious blurb) with a strong track record in her home country, is already a cult figure in her adopted hometown of New York. Her new album, The Big Machine, a conceptual tribute to the city, is about to hit the UK on a tide of gathering interest. And it doesn’t take more than a couple of spins for the aptness of the Bush comparison to make itself abundantly clear.

At times, the extraordinary swoops and intervals of Simon’s vocals are so reminiscent of Bush’s early work, the timbre so similar, that for a second, it’s like being transported back 30 years to a time when the idiosyncratic masterpieces of the UK’s most singular female singer-songwriter carved such a significant path through contemporary pop. But the comparison works – and is a tribute to both women – because once the frisson has passed, it’s quite clear that Simon is a formidable and unique talent in her own right.

Not for her the metaphysical expeditions across the inner landscape of Bush’s child-woman, with their obscure literary and philosophical references. Simon’s lyrics are emphatically 21st-centry urban, rooted in accomplished, synthesised beats.

She’s a one-woman electro-band, a pioneer of “The Arm” – a rather startling, customised sleeve that gives her complete control over her musical gadgets and voice manipulation technology and which, in live performance, allows her to replicate the complex, symphonic qualities of her recordings.

Brick by brick this Brooklyn resident constructs a musical picture of an iconic city that obviously has her firmly in its grasp. Simon’s is a different kind of skyline, far removed from the art deco canyons or concrete jungle conjured by the likes of Gershwin and Bernstein.

Emilie Simon: one-woman electro-band

The album is full of arresting juxtapositions: the near cacophony of the urgent brassy intro to “Rainbow” setting up the first appearance of Simon’s deceptively girlish voice; the retro electronica – almost Thompson Twin-like – of the hypnotic “Dreamland”; the brilliant, glittering vocals of “Nothing to do With You” (the most Bush-like of all the tracks, and for me, the album’s standout number, along with “Closer”); the brooding promise of adventure in “Chinatown”.

Moods shift in the flicker of a neon light as Simon subtlely works the technology to give her voice a new resonance. It’s great to hear a genuinely different sound cutting through the increasingly homogenised legions of young female singer songwriters.

Concert Review – Barb Jungr, Jazz at the Fleece (Stoke-by-Nayland), 9th July 2010

10 Jul
“The River”: Barb Jungr sings the Springsteen totem at the Carlyle, in cooler conditions than we enjoyed last night

Barb Jungr: a triumphant night for Jazz at the Fleece

In another triumph for Jazz at the Fleece last night, Barb Jungr took on the hottest evening of the year so far, and the throbbing beats of a corporate ball being held in the conference suite next door, and she beat them both into submission. Her key weapon was her sublime ability to conjure a succession of images from lyrics, letting them swirl and merge in the minimal space between the stage and an audience that was hooked, mesmerised, by every word. There can’t be a finer spinner of tales on the live music scene today.

Jungr has evolved a unique performance style that is at once uncompromising and vulnerable. In this intimate setting, she surrendered herself to tremendous risks, using her breadth and range in ways that only a singer who is utterly at ease with her craft could possibly do. And song after song, she pulled it off, through two sets based on her recent album, The Men I Love (conceived, originally, for a highly successful run at the legendary Carlyle Cafe in Manhattan), dusted here and there with a handful of surprises. Concluding the first set with a keening version of “Ferry Cross the Mersey” created an intriguing shift in mood after the gathering intensity of a sequence of songs descending step by step into the darker reaches of emotion.

The Men I Love: conceived for a run at the Carlyle Cafe

At the start, Jungr promised us a journey from fun through pain and loss – recurring themes in her work – to redemption. It was a route peppered with anecdotes and observations: Paul Simon’s grim face amidst the vibrant enthusiasm of a World Cup concert; the hilarious excitement when Micky Dolenz was nearly spotted in a Fulham greengrocer’s; the opposite trajectories of hope and expectation as life goes on (David Byrne’s “Once in a Lifetime”); a salutary encounter with Janet Street Porter during a Radio 4 panel discussion; an early acquaintance with Todd Rundgren’s ex-wife and her quest for a rock star replacement.

But everything came back to the songs. Jungr described how critics have been divided about her treatment of Springsteen’s “The River”, with the more proprietorial lamenting her audacity at tackling one of the Boss’s totem numbers. Her spare, searing exploration of his bittersweet take on a relationship that’s run into the ground had us enthralled and was ample riposte to the nay-sayers. Tears trickled unashamedly as during “Everything I Own”, each word a poignant nudge to a private memory, Jungr enveloped us in a collective recognition of grief and loss. “Red Red Wine” became a keening anthem to recovery – aided, perhaps, by a hint of belligerence. With wry references to the intruding bass thuds from next door, she set her chin high and simply outsung the competition. Neil Diamond’s “I’m a Believer” became a torch-song: who else could achieve that with a Monkees number? The medley of “This Old Heart of Mine” and “Love Hurts” was almost unbearably moving. Paul Simon’s “My Little Town” revealed Jungr’s narrative brilliance at its best.

At the end, she thanked the audience for supporting live music. So a word of praise for the efforts of the team behind Jazz at the Fleece, which continues to be a beacon of live music in this corner of Suffolk. They manage to attract an extraordinary calibre of artist each Friday night, turning a bland hotel function room into a small arena of excellence, and each season features music for a huge variety of tastes. To see even a small number of empty seats is always a disappointment so if you find yourself out here for a weekend and love live music, do check out who’s playing or singing.

CD Review – Taeko, Voice

29 Jun

Taeko sings “What are you doing the rest of your life?” from her previous album, One Love

Voice: Taeko's new album - multiple influences knock sparks off each other

Take a talented young Japanese singer, transplant her to New York in her formative musical years, immerse her in what is probably the world’s richest jazz scene, then stand back and listen to all those influences collide, knocking sparks off each other. That’s the story of Taeko Fukao’s career so far, and the result is a fascinating blend of bebop and scat, underscored at times by a poignant serenity fired by her native folk heritage, and at others by the smooth, tasteful sheen that defines the best of modern, mainstream jazz vocalists.

Taeko’s new album, Voice, is a vibrant patchwork of styles that reveals, above all, the passion with which she has explored the range of the jazz idiom. In some ways, it’s a showcase for the benefits of intense study – and just occasionally, the impact is almost overwhelming as she tears up a furious-paced “On A Clear Day” with the dexterity of Ella in her prime, or launches into the bebop delights of the Monk/Hawkins/Hendricks number “I Mean You”, recalling Annie Ross or Cleo Laine at the peak of their vocal powers.

Then she shifts tone and mood with a sublime rendition of the 1940s Japanese ballad “Soochow Serenade” and later, with the self-penned “Spring Nocturne”. Think Sade, with attitude. For all the pace and energy in the surrounding numbers, these are the most effective moments on the album: passages of reflection and melancholy in which a softer, mellow timbre is allowed to flourish on a more burnished melodic line, taken to the limit on Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes”.

This is where Taeko sounds genuinely at home, in the telling of stories, and not least on a subtle, swinging, modernised “Biwako”, a folk song about the Japanese lake near her birthplace at Shiga. Doug Richardson’s melodica solo comes unexpectedly, adding yet another flavour to the music and reflecting Taeko’s confidence in choosing musicians who can complement her eclectic vision with considerable ease: Richardson also plays drums, with Greg Lewis on the organ, guitarist Kevin McNeal, pianist Lou Rainone, and bass player Gaku Takanashi. All have their moments to shine – a sure sign of a generous vocalist.

Such is her versatility that the overall effect is sometimes like being strafed by a benign scattergun loaded with different styles. All of which makes the album’s title more appropriate. She shares one of her most promising vocal qualities – the ability to be part of the band rather than just the singer out front – with the greats. Taeko veers from the soulful funk of the opening track, Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island” (lyrics by one of her mentors Juanita Fleming) to Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues”, using her sound in an assertive, challenging way without straying into aggression.

Her phrasing and diction are impeccable, with interesting nuances generated by the occasional hint of an accent rarely heard in jazz. It’s 12 years since she answered the call of the Big Apple. They’ve been well spent and the city has served her well. But if this album is anything to go by, Taeko’s horizons are set for rapid expansion. There’s a big jazz world out there and it’s beckoning an unusual and singular talent.

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CD Review – Jude Cowan: Doodlebug Alley

15 Jun

Jude Cowan singing Doodlebug Alley, the title track from her new album

Doodlebug Alley: bringing back memories of a teenage record producer

When I was13, I was a producer for a day. Armed with my trusty Phillips cassette recorder (dodgy mic lead but it worked if you held it in a certain position), I persuaded my seven-year-old sister Isabel to make a record with me. We spent a busy hour extemporising. I know we reached far and wide for our cultural allusions but for some reason only the films of Joan Crawford (there was a Saturday afternoon season on television) and Clark Gable, and sexy underwear (always worth a childish giggle) linger in the memory after all this time.

We came up with some basic tunes, beat the rhythms on a pile of books and, making it up as she went along, Isabel plucked her own lyrics out of thin air with a facility beyond her years. Before we ran out of steam, we had a whole C60 side of material – enough for a whole album – and armed with scissors, a couple of photographs and a black felt tip, I quickly rustled up a cover. I can still see it. Bella, it was called. And I know the words “Includes the hit single…” appeared somewhere, together with my all-important producer’s credit. It must still be around somewhere at the back of a cupboard.

What prompted this flood of reminiscence? A few spins of Jude Cowan’s new album, Doodlebug Alley. Not that I’m suggesting Cowan is stranded in early adolescence or that there is anything remotely childish about the production or concept, or her stridently poetic lyrics. But the overall effect is of a similarly chaotic, random clash of references and influences – and yes, more than a hint of the precocity that makes me wince slightly as I look back down the corridor of years.

Doodlebug Alley is nothing if not experimental and uncompromising. But it’s telling that the first time I grabbed the sleeve for more information was midway through “She Sits at the Window” – itself a nostalgic treat, as it conjured hours of listening to obscure Radio 4 afternoon dramatisations during the afternoon ‘rests’ of childhood – and discovered that the eerie beauty of the piano solo was down to composer Nicky Bendix rather than Cowan herself.

Easy listening, this is not, and Bendix’s interlude provides a welcome respite from Cowan’s acerbic and jagged adventure across a rich landscape of folklore, literature and, in the title track, popular history, in which she mainly accompanies herself on her disconcertingly cheerful ukelele.

The publicity blurb generated high expectations: John Gay meets Hogarth, say, they bump into Brecht and Brel, and the essence of their artistic collaboration is channelled by Cowan as a latter-day Agnes Bernelle. And occasionally, there is the real prospect of those expectations being met – particularly in the visceral bleakness of “Remember Sinners” (an homage to the French poet François Villon), with Tom Fawcett contributing a grim guest appearance, disturbingly bringing the first-hand gallows experience to life (and death). “Jolly Roger” takes a long, hard look at unwanted pregnancy, finding a rare dark humour in the depths of experience. There is some fine, topical, satire too in the vicious “Naughty Daddy”, a timely anti-capitalist swipe.

But the high points are undermined by moments of startling banality particularly in the title track, which is supposed to evoke the live-for-the-moment intensity of London during the Blitz. The awkward rhythmic shifts, a burst of finger-clicking, the rhyming of arse with St Pancreas, and a bzzzz more reminiscent of a dying bluebottle than the drone of an approaching V1, had me glaring at the speakers in disbelief and instead, brought my old Phillips days vividly to life.

I wanted to love Doodlebug Alley (note to PRs: Please stop comparing any hard-to-categorise female artists with Kate Bush. It’s a tired old cliché these days, and rarely flatters either party). But despite its sardonic darkness, it’s left me frustrated. Jude Cowan, a cultural historian, clearly has genuinely original talents to be reckoned with. I’d like to see them harnessed with more discipline and a clearer vision next time round.

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Annie Haslam – Renaissance Woman

8 Jun

“Northern Lights” – the song has lasted better than this 1970s promo video

Annie Haslam: back at the mic, where she belongs (picture by Richard Barnes)

One of the great things about being a journalist is that every now and then, you get – or create – the opportunity to connect with somebody whose work, for whatever reason, has provided a soundtrack to, or influenced in some way, your own life. Of course there is also the old adage that you should never meet your heroes in case they turn out to have feet of clay but I’ve been lucky during my years of interviewing singers. Very few have disappointed, and Annie Haslam was no exception.

“Northern Lights” is one of those songs that transports me instantly back to my youth. I was 16  when prog-rock band Renaissance had their only major hit single in the summer of 1978, but 32 years later just a couple of bars of Annie’s soaring lead vocal takes me right back and the song still sounds as fresh and poignant as it did then. I loved songwriter Betty Thatcher’s imagery and in those days, before I had traveled much beyond my own back garden, the idea of turning to see the northern lights shimmering above an aeroplane wing was intensely romantic.

Song for all Seasons: the album that brought us "Northern Lights"

I’ve been a fan of Annie’s scintillating five-octave voice ever since and always felt that Renaissance, who made some brilliantly inventive albums in the 1970s, didn’t get the attention they deserved. So when I discovered that she now lives in the States and combines singing with painting, I decided to track her down for a feature I was writing on singers who have portfolio careers.

During the course of three lengthy telephone conversations, I spoke to Annie about her childhood in Bolton and her early years as a singer, the rise of Renaissance, her later solo career and her discovery of a style of painting known as dream expressionism. At the time, she was ambivalent about the music business – adamant that she hadn’t actually stopped singing, emphatic that her art was simply an extension of her vocal work, but weary of toiling on the road and the effort of managing a career.

So it’s wonderful to report that now, reunited with Michael Dunford – who was responsible for the bulk of Renaissance’s symphonic, folk- and jazz- influenced music – she is back in front of the mic, touring through the summer and recreating many of those epic numbers from the height of the band’s success. Alas for us in the UK, the tour is currently limited to the American circuit, but with Japanese dates also scheduled, hopefully some inspired British promoter will rise to the challenge and bring them back home to their roots.

My conversations with Annie eventually led to a feature about Renaissance in Classic Rock Presents Prog magazine and a proposed profile for an art publication which never saw the light of day. I’m publishing it here for the first time; obviously the emphasis is on Annie’s painting rather than the music, but I still think it gives some insight into the person behind one of the finest – and undervalued – female voices of modern popular music.

Anne Haslam: Singer and Artist

Annie Haslam with her painting "Embryonic Dream" (picture by Scott Weiner)

When singer Annie Haslam woke up one morning in 2002 with the gut feeling that it was time to start painting, she knew she had to go with it. After more than 30 years in the music business, she’d long since learned to recognise the all-important moments that contain the germ of a new artistic direction.

With her soaring, five-octave voice, Annie is best known as the lead singer of influential 1970s classical rock band Renaissance but she has also enjoyed a successful solo career that has taken her around the world. By 2002, however, the rigours of life in a relentlessly commercial industry were taking their toll. She was ready for a change and despite the fact that she hadn’t picked up a brush since her student days at Redruth Art School in Cornwall in the 1960s, her inner voice was insistent.

“I’ve no idea where it came from but I knew from my past experience that I should act on it,” she says. “Although I’d never really painted before. I’d studied fabric printing, photography and lettering at art school. I think I did one watercolour but I didn’t have the patience for it and it wasn’t very good. We didn’t get on!”

Today, Annie lives in the pretty Pennsylvanian haven of Doylestown, a long way from her Lancashire roots, where she has remained since the end of her marriage to American businessman Marc Hoffman. Armed only with a profound trust in her own instincts, she turned her large, light-filled sunroom into a studio, and went out to buy an easel, canvases and paints, and a ‘how-to’ book on oil painting. But she didn’t get beyond page one.

“Everything stayed in that room for two months,” she remembers. “I’d walk through and water the plants and look at that blank canvas. But there was nothing going on inside. Then one day I just felt it was time to sit down and try it, do something. I went out and picked a huge tiger lily. And I started with the grass. Then I did the sky, and put the lily in between. But it wasn’t very good and I was very disappointed, thinking there must be millions of people out there who could paint better than this.”

Upset because she still couldn’t connect with the feeling that had compelled her to start painting, Annie looked again at her work and to her surprise, realised that the grass she had rendered on the canvas was very detailed and textured. So she launched herself on a second attempt, this time concentrating on the greenness of the lawn.

“It was quite weird, because I felt as if someone was holding my hand,” she says. “The detail was exciting and I really liked the feeling. It was real, yet it wasn’t. The next painting I did was of a UFO hovering over an ocean! They were definitely other worldly images and it was as if they were fighting to get through the door. They couldn’t wait. Suddenly I was doing six or seven paintings a day and I found myself working at one o’clock in the morning. It was like a fever, I couldn’t stop. And I was thrilled!”

During this explosion of creativity, she quickly developed a free-flowing, organic style that makes spectacular use of colour to create dream-like landscapes and mysterious, fantastical images: mountains and dragons, moonlit lakes and starry skies. Dubbed ‘dream expressionism,’ it’s a type of art that commands a huge following and Annie soon found her reputation spreading beyond the fan-base she enjoyed as a singer.

“At that stage, nothing was ever preconceived,” she explains. “I would just pick some colours and put them on the brush and start painting. It’s still like that. I don’t know where they come from – and I don’t like looking at other people’s pictures to get an idea of how something should look. If somebody wants a commission done, I ask for their favourite colours and as much information about themselves as they can give me. Then I make a painting. And sometimes they come back and say that I’ve captured them and I can’t tell you what it feels like, quite incredible.”

Annie only had to wait a year for her first solo exhibition. In 2003 a Philadelphia radio station invited her to show a few pieces in its annual classic rock art show, where they appeared alongside the work of Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood and legendary crooner Tony Bennett. Local gallery owner Colm Rowan spotted her work and offered her his entire space. She displayed 63 pieces and sold 26 of them in just three weeks. Further proof of the appeal of her style came in 2005 when she was asked to show three paintings at the Florence Biennale contemporary art exhibition

“Sometimes I’ll get a title immediately, others I’ll be looking at the work for weeks before it comes,” she says. “But the day the invitation arrived from Florence, I’d been working on a 3’ x 4’ oil painting in lavender and golden yellow, and I’d already decided to call it ‘Tuscan Sun!’ I almost fell off my stool when the email came through – the painting took on a whole different meaning after that.”

One thing that has changed since she started her ‘second career’ is the medium. She found that the combined fumes of the oil paints and turps were making her feel ill. Ever mindful of her own health – Annie survived a battle with breast cancer in 1992 – she reluctantly altered her working materials.

“I loved the oils with a passion,” she says. “The colours were a little more subtle and soft, and I could move them around very easily. But when I realised I was making myself sick, I started using acrylics, which have a very different feel. They took me quite a while to get used to and they aren’t as smooth; you can buy different mediums to thin them down but I didn’t want to bring a lot of chemicals back into it. They are far brighter and have a different, vibrant look, which is very healing.”

Annie is adamant that painting is an extension of her singing rather than a replacement for it. She has used her own artwork on her CD covers and a further musical link is crystallised in the instruments she has painted, including four violins for the Trans Siberian Orchestra and two guitars – “What a beautiful instrument to hold and paint” – which now hang in Hard Rock Cafes in Cleveland and San Diego.

“I’ve decided I really have to move on from the past and let it go but I wouldn’t change anything about it,” she says. “If it had been any different, I might not be where I am now, painting. It might not have had the opportunity to come out. I’m so thankful for it because I love to do it, and I don’t have to worry about dealing with many other people, which you do in the music industry.”

Profile

Born in Bolton in1947, Annie Haslam studied art in Cornwall and was briefly a fashion designer in London before she started to sing professionally. In 1971 she joined Renaissance and her five-octave voice quickly became one of the group’s defining qualities through a series of acclaimed albums. In 1978 they had a major hit single with Northern Lights. When the band split in 1987, Annie embarked on a successful solo career. She has worked with the best in the business, including Roy Wood, Justin Hayward, producer Tony Visconti and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. She began painting in 2002 and now has a second career as a professional artist, exhibiting her work around the world and accepting private commissions.

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