Laurel Massé

Songbird at Dusk

Jo Stafford has died in her home in California. Stephen Holden has written a lovely tribute and obituary in the New York Times; please read it here.

Jo Stafford had all the qualities I most admire in a singer. Her voice was lovely and natural, but that naturalness concealed a great technique and she made singing sound easy. Her diction was clear and conversational, her intonation flawless. Everything she sang was imbued with a quality of honesty that made the listener believe her. There were no mannerisms, and no pyrotechnics; her understatement was the greatest ally a lyricist could have, because she let the song speak for itself. And she could swing, oh my yes, and without "jazzy" mannerisms. Hers was a glowing and burnished sound, and hers also a grace that is very rare these days. It is our loss that we don't seem to have another Jo waiting in the wings.

She was a tremendous influence on me, and so tonight, I grieve for her death, and celebrate her life and  all the songs she sang, the hearts she comforted, and the smiles she teased onto our faces. I will miss her.

the Sounds of Christmas

This weekend's storms have stripped the leaves from the tree outside my window, leaves that had stubbornly remained green weeks after every other leaf in town had turned gold, red, or brown, and then had been equally adamant about resisting gravity. This morning, though, light filters to my windows through a lacy network of bare branches.

I am home sick abed, felled by the Grande Dame of All Colds. Sore-throated, fuzzy-headed, sniffling and coughing, and not at all glamourous, I have not been this ill in a long time. My apartment is a TV-Free zone, so I am alternating drowsing with attempts to read and listen to music. Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent. Gaudete means rejoice, and I think I can stop some of my grumbling about premature Christmas music long enough to suggest some of my favorite Christmas rejoicing music to you all. It's not a long list, just my favorites.

The Sounds of Christmas, a long out-of-print Fred Waring recording, is a lovely collage of Christmas music that gives the impression of walking through a town where there are carollers on every corner. The first singing voice you hear on the recording, and the last, is that of my grandfather, Leonard Kranendonk. A more beautiful baritone cannot be imagined. I miss him.

Now is the Caroling Season and Caroling, Caroling, also Fred Waring. These are both available on CD. The singing is gorgeous and joyful, the diction unaffected yet all the words are completely understandable. Choir and other vocal ensemble directors, take note!

On Yoolis Night, by Anonymous4. Medieval carols and motets sung flawlessly, with soprano Ruth Cunningham's pure soaring voice lifting the listener to bliss.

He Is Christmas, Take Six. The perfect balance to the preceding recording, this acapella joy-fest is grounded in the body, and one must dance. Must!

Of course the Manhattan Transfer has done some lovely holiday recordings, too: The Christmas Album and  An Acapella Christmas.

Little Women, the fim soundtrack by Thomas Newman. One of my yearly rituals is the re-reading of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a book I have been devoted to since I first read it when I was about 7. More than anything, I wanted to grow up to be Jo March. This novel has been adapted for film four times so far, once in 1918 as a silent, once in 1933 (Katherine Hepburn portayed Jo), and again in 1949 (my least favorite. June Allyson as Jo? I think not. Elizabeth Taylor as Amy? The mind reels.) My favorite of all these is director Gillian Armstrong's 1994 version, starring Winona Ryder as Jo and Susan Sarandon as Marmee - you can read more about this on the IMDB site. Thomas Newman's score is evocative and supportive and beautiful. Why is this on my Christmas list? Because the book opens at Christmas time, and as originally planned by Alcott, closes on the following Christmas (what we now know as Little Women was originally two books,Little Women and Good Wives), and so for me it has been part of my Christmas for ... hmmm... a few years.

Though at this moment I feel like I am going to be coughing all the rest of my natural life (you know that feeling!), I think that next year I will be able to add one more Christmas collection to the list: my own, which I am hoping to record in 2008.

But for now, more tea. I continue to wish you all a blessed Advent.

 

Excuse me, what?

I confess...and not to loving ice cream, trash novels, or expensive shoes. No, far simpler and cheaper! I love menu misprints. Typos on signs. Mondegreens. And, my favorite, labeling by someone who does knows what she or he has heard, but not what it means.

I saw the following on a restaurant menu board: "pre-fixed dinner". Without knowing when it was fixed, I'm not sure I'd want to order that dinner.

And I saw this one this morning on ebay where I was looking for an armchair: "old liar back chair". Hmmm. Whose was it? And - who in Washington should have it now? The mind reels.

Your turn. Go ahead. Make me laugh.

J.K. Rowling's bookshelf

I wonder what J.K. Rowling has on her bookshelf. I specifically wonder if she has read anything by British theologian James Alison. JATB, any guesses?

In the meantime... I was not going to succumb, I was going to embrace holy patience and wait till one of my friends had finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but my friends were reading s-l-o-w-l-y, and when I did a recording session on Saturday, the wonderful engineer and I started talking about the HP books, and the next thing I knew, we were in a bookstore. Buying. WIthout regrets, I hasten to add. I read and read and read and read and I cried, too, of course, and I know how it ends, and am satisfied. No, I am not going to tell you why. Yes, you will have to read it for yourselves.

Today has been a day of relentless rain, a perfect day to stay in and read (though I went out and rehearsed). It is now tea-time, and your very own literate singer is in her apartment, having a mug of tea, and thinking about and missing the so-very-real characters in the HP series. Do not worry - I did this at the end of the Lord of the Rings saga, too, and that was worse, because I knew that Tolkien was dead, and there would be no more books from that hand, that heart. This little sniffly episode will pass, is passing, has passed, and here is why: I know that the only thing that prevents us from seeing miracles and magic in our midst every moment of every day is that we do not know how to see. I know that the whole bright world is flaming like shook foil, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote. That every bush is afire with God. That the kingdom of heaven is among us. And that we need our eyes opened.

I have read that, when Capt. James Cook sailed his tall ships to the Hawaiian Islands, and anchored there offshore, nobody on the beach could see the boats. Sight happens in the brain, really - information of light and shadow has to be interpreted, and then, and only then, do we actually "see", because we know, from referencing previous patterns, what we are seeing. The islanders had no frame of reference for those ships, their brains had no way to interpret and categorize those shapes, and so discarded the information. No one saw the boats.

Even if this is not what actually happened, not factual, I believe it to be true. We all have moments when, for no apparent reason, a curtain in our mind moves aside, and we see a reality far more intense than that which we usually notice. Frighteningly beautiful. Sacred. Magical. Holy. Enlightened. Imbued. Whatever word you choose. Jesus talks about the eye being the lamp of the body, and that if that eye is clear and healthy (which it often is not) we fill with light, because there is nothing, no film, between us and the light. Which is the state mystics seem to live in, and which scares most of us silly, so we reach for our "real life" shades, and call the intensified living unreal and unrealistic when it is actually the Realest Real. I am reminded of the Three Stooges. Curly starts yelling, "I can't see! I can't see!" Larry asks, "Why not?" Curly replies, still panicked, "My eyes are closed!". Yep, that's us.

I think that books like these - Harry Potter,Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Wrinkle in Time - blow that curtain a little, move it away for a moment,. We love them because they help us to see things rain-washed, startling, and fresh.

LIke they were in that garden we used to play in. Remember?

Thank you, J.K.Rowling

Like many folks, I have been spending the last few days re-reading the sixth Harry Potter book, refreshing my memory in preparation for savoring the seventh and final one. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes on sale here in NY in about two hours. Even before I read it, though, I am feeling teary. It will be hard to say goodbye to this series. I cried for a week when I read the last paragraph of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, wept for The Wind in the Willows, too.

I will write more about this in the next few days, about books that have shown me a secret door back into the garden, but for now, my profound gratitude to J.K. Rowling, who said "yes" when Harry Potter presented himself to her to be written. Jo, I am so proud of you. Well done! And thank you!

transcendence

Have you ever seen a painting that haunted your inner vision, read a book of ideas that gnawed at you, heard music that would not let you rest but challenged you to risk immolation? When this happens, and it is rare, it is deeply unsettling and uncomfortable in a way that one can only hope will eventually lead to greater insight and better art. But there are no guarantees, and there is a whisper in your gut saying, "now what do I do?"

What, indeed.

This past Friday I had the great privilege of seeing Chris Thile and his new band, the Tensions Mountain Boys, at a house concert on the night before their Carnegie Hall debut. It is now Tuesday evening, and I am still wrestling with the experience. It was the most extraordinary concert I have seen in decades. On that long ago night, I finally saw Joni Mitchell in person. Jaco Pastorius was in the band, vibrantly alive. The Persuasions came out to sing Shadows and Light with her. This artist, who had been so important to me since her very first album, was transcendent that night. I cried from the joy of being hit by so much beauty at once and the pain of doubting that I would ever be a fully-realized artist. Not just singer. Artist.

Beauty isn't pretty. Beauty is overwhelming. And because we are equipped to handle only so much at a time, unexpected glimpses, overdoses, of beauty take our breath away. Bring us to tears. Knock us to our knees. I think this is why angels usually have to say "Fear not." And I have never met an artist who did not have to wrestle, at least now and then if not every day, with self-doubt of some sort. The tormenting question is "am I good enough?" Am I skilled enough to realize my vision? Can I put this into words and endure the endless process of revision? Can I get this sound that is in my head into my fingers, onto the page, onto the recording? And will I hold up, can I last long enough, will my voice hold out?

Joni's concert -  her work that seemed to me so fully realized - raised the doubt demons that had been hiding in my spirit, and it was not until I started singing a capella 20 years later, and had recorded Feather and Bone, that I felt I had done something as fully-formed. I am not saying I wanted to be like Joni, or that I envied her. I just thought that she was being Joni Mitchell with every fiber of her being and every morsel of her creative spirit, and I wanted to be fully Laurel in that same way, and it takes a long time.

I don't know if I can articulate what I am feeling. There are feathers and bones inside me all the time. Everything I have done since then rests on what that was to me, a glimpse of what I am when I get out of my own way, a taste of what I could do if I really committed.

I have done good work since then, I know, but I am being told is time to ratchet up. I know this because of what I heard and saw last Friday and what it has called up in me. Chris Thile, one of the finest mandolin players in the world, has taken his music far beyond boundaries, just right through them as if they are not there. And so they are not, not anymore. Chris and his band were extraordinary. I whooped and cheered at the concert, and I have been crying off and on ever since. It was the real deal. It was  straight on till morning. It was What We Are Here For. And so, like that Joni Mitchell concert so long ago, it was a great big smack-in-the-face gauntlet, and a challenge: What, Miss Laurel, are you going to do NOW?

And I don't know yet, and that is painful.

Elizabeth Bishop poem

I heard this poem today on BBC Radio 4, which I listen to online - thank you BBC, thank you Apple, thank you Silicon Valley, and belated apologies to every geek I was too "cool" to date. It really does take a village....

I Am in Need of Music

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.        

Elizabeth Bishop

Metropolitan Room Set List

I Gotta Crow / I’m Flying    Carolyn Leigh / Mark Charlap

On the Street Where You Live  Alan Jay Lerner / Frederick Loewe

Seven Years in Four Minutes Medley *** 

Skylark   Johnny Mercer /  Hoagy Carmichael

Lover of High Wire  / Bird Girl    Carol Hall / Steven Lutvak, Kevin Hinshaw

Harlem in Havana      Joni Mitchell

April in Paris / Not Exactly Paris   Vernon Duke, Michael Leonard / Russell George

Heart and Soul *   Frank Loesser / Hoagy Carmichael 

Fascinatin’ Rhythm   George Gershwin

Sweet and Slow  Al Dubin / Harry Warren

Crazy *    Willie Nelson

Blue Rondo à la Turk  Dave Brubeck

Never Never Land   Betty Comden & Adolph Green / Jule Styne

The Blackest Crow ** (encore)   Traditional

57 Octaves Below Middle C  (encore)  Carol Hall & Laurel Massé / Tex Arnold

All arrangements by Tex Arnold except:
* Heart and Soul and Crazy arranged by Vinnie Martucci
** The Blackest Crow arranged by Laurel Massé
*** Seven Years in Four Minutes arranged by Tex Arnold and Laurel Massé

Circus Contraption

Several nights ago, I saw one of the most extraordinary shows I have ever seen: Circus Contraption's Grand American Traveling Dime Museum. This one-ring circus, based in Seattle, is at The Theater for the New City, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, until September 23. My dear friend Rick, who has a talent for sniffing out unconventional performances, insisted I go, and he was so right. I whooped and gasped, sighed and shrieked, laughed, and yes, shed a tear or two. The feats are truly amazing, the music is original and grand. This is not a little-kids circus; imagine Kurt Weill and the girls from the Kit Kat Club taking a trip to Coney Island, and you begin to get a hint of the flavor.

Check out the website at www.circuscontraption.com, get your tickets, and catch one of the performances. You might see me there - I am going back as soon as I can. Once you have entered the Traveling Dime Museum world, try, just try, to convince me you don't have a thought of running away to join the circus. I'd consider it myself, if they didn't already have a great singer in Sari Breznau (and she can play the trumpet, too).