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.

Gig updates

Hello all -

This is my interpretive dance called "Summer": a rhythm of being very busy, interspersed with periods of lying on the floor in heat-induced stupor. But I have some gigs coming up that I want you all to know about.

This week, starting tomorrow! Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Western and Swing Week. Learn more about this extraordinary musical experience by going to www.ashokan.org and clicking on Ashokan FIddle and Dance Camps. Then reserve your space for next year!

In July I am co-producing CDs for two other artists here in the city, which is fascinating work. Then on Thursday, July 24th, I will be at Stone Mountain Center for the Arts in Brownfield, ME. I sang there last year, and it was a revelation. The venue is delightful, and the owners, one of whom, Carol Noonan, is a highly-regarded folksinger, have done everything they can to create a performance space that is pleasurable for audience and performer alike. And the food is very fine. (Note: this date has been postponed. I will repost as soon as the new date is finalized).

The next day, Tex Arnold and I drive down to New Haven for the start of this year's Cabaret Conference at Yale. This year I am again part of a splendid teaching staff, and will be singing several songs in the faculty concert on Sunday, July 27th.

August will be devoted to practice and planning. I am doing a concert of sacred music at the Church of St. Francis Xavier on 16th Street in Chelsea (Monday, November 17th), as part of their annual PAX concert series. I have not done such a concert for a few years; the last ones were a capella, but this time I plan to  have accompaniment. The concert must be designed, and new arrangements created. I am also  putting together an Advent/Christmas concert (more on that when the tentative booking is confirmed). And Jalala will be rehearsing! Janis (Siegel, Manhattan Transfer), Lauren (Kinhan, New York Voices) and I have a lovely repertoire started, and will be continuing to arrange, rehearse, and refine so as to step into the studio in September as part of jazz guitarist Frank Vignola's new recording.

On Monday, September 15th, I will be making my solo debut at Birdland. I have not sung there since Moxie (Janis, Cheryl Bentyne and I) played sold-out shows there back in 2000. So I am very excited about this upcoming date, and sincerely hope that I will see some of you there.

Finally, on Saturday, September 27th, in Washington, DC, Wendy Lane Bailey and I will be teaching another master class for performers. These classes are genre-free: the basic principles of song interpretation and stagecraft are the same regardless of genre. If you sing jazz, great! Musical theater? Fantastic! Opera? Welcome! Western Swing? Let's dance! Folk? Country? All are welcome. Not so sure about my heavy metal performance chops, but I did meet Ozzie Osbourne back in the Transfer years... For information and to register, write to parkroadmanagement@verizon.net

At the moment, that's the performance news. More to come, my friends... and more kinds of news, too.

Quick gig update

I am singing this Thursday, June 19th, in Norwood, NY, in the bandshell on the village green. This is an outdoor concert in a lovely setting, and it is free to the public. Bring a blanket, bring a chair, bring your children and dogs, and you will feel at home. I remember standing on the stage there, looking out at the folks, and thinking that I was looking at our collective dream of community.
The concert starts at 7, and will be all done by 9 PM.

Dancing on the Air

It was about ten years ago - possibly eleven - that I answered the phone in my home in the Adirondacks to find Jay Ungar and Molly Mason on the line. They were calling to invite me to do a guest appearance on their live radio show, Dancing on the Air. I said yes, drove south on the appointed date, and met these two musicians who, over the course of the next few years, quietly changed my life. A month or two after that show, they called again, this time asking me to teach that summer at Ashokan Fiddle and Dance, their yearly music camp in the Catskills. Again I said yes, though I had decided that I would be singing a capella the rest of my life, though I had never taught singing before, though I had never been to a sleepaway camp in my childhood. That "yes" proved - and proves again every year - to be one of the wisest decisions I have ever made.

How to describe Ashokan? I could speak of the lovely wooded setting, the lake, the stars at night. I could speak of the caliber of the musicianship of the staff (and the campers). Of the dancing every night to live music. Of the wonderful food prepared with fresh ingredients, the greatest of which is love.

Buit what I describe most often, and always with gratitude, is the mutual appreciation that is in the very air. The competitive model of the world is so often discovered to be not very useful. One sighs, one shrugs, one murmurs that nothing can be done. But at Ashokan something has been done: that model has been tossed aside. Instead, campers are encouraged and inspired by a great teaching staff, and applauded for the courage it takes to learn new skills. That staff, all professional musicians and dance teachers, delight in each other's growth and excellence. This means that is is OK to take up a new instrument, to ask for help in a tricky bit of music, to try a dance step, to look like a fool - because in all these one is supported and cherished. This is where I learned that what I thought, as a teenager, is true: competition is not natural. You have to be taught. What is natural is to gather in community and to delight in each others' accomplishments and triumphs, and to grieve over each others' sorrows (for a fascinating theological/philosophical view of the origins of competition and misdirected desire, I recommend Réné Girard's book, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning). Teaching at Western and Swing Week has become the north star of my year, and my reminder that we are all family, and I am looking forward again to being there this summer (for information on dates and on Western and Swing, Northern, and Southern weeks, click here.

Today, I am taking a car ride, leaving the city and driving north to Albany with accompanist/arranger Tex Arnold to make another guest appearance on Dancing on the Air. It has been a few years since my last time on the stage at the Linda Norris Auditorium, and Tex has never been there. I have picked out the songs I will sing, but I know that there will be some last minute additions, and some spontaneous musical combinations that will reflect Jay and Molly's own eclectic musical tastes and their camaraderie, and their belief in the power of music and in people. I invite you to tune in and join us, no matter where you are.  The show is aired on WAMC at 8 PM (eastern daylight savings time) and can be heard online at www.wamc.org.

Metropolitan Room, 1/23 - 28

The tunes are picked, the arrangements written, the set list figured out. The band - Tex Arnold on piano, Tom Hubbard on bass, and Rich de Rosa on drums - has rehearsed. I'm not coughing anymore, and I know what shoes I am going to wear. Tomorrow is the first night of my five-night run at the Metropolitan Room in Manhattan (see Upcoming Performances in the sidebar for more info).

For this gig I chose about a dozen new tunes, new to me, at least, thereby throwing a gauntlet down in front of my own feet. I was beginning to feel quite nervous, but when I heard Tex's arrangements yesterday - yes, only yesterday - that nervousness shifted to excitement. They are better than anything I had imagined, and I can't wait to sing them again.

Wish me luck. I hope to see some of you there.

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.

 

Mark your calendars!

Here is the first heads-up for my January gig in New York. I will be singing at the Metropolitan Room on 22nd St here in Manhattan this coming January 23 - 27, with one show nightly at the civilized hour of 7:30 PM (7 on the 27th). So lovely to go onstage well before my bedtime! Tex Arnold will be accompanying me again, and we are meeting tomorrow morning to start to put the show together. We have some new tunes to look at; right this moment I have no idea what the song list will turn out to be. No idea, none. Stay tuned...

More Advent thoughts on a rainy Sunday

1. There are still two weeks left of Advent, two weeks until Christmas Eve, two weeks before Christmas songs are actually à propos. Please can't we wait? St. Jude, where are you? I may have a lost cause here. 
All this holy time of Advent can give one time to quietly consider what it means to have a savior, born as one of us, come to save, to heal, to  illuminate, to energize us, kick us lovingly into action, and to bind us all together as children of God. Perhaps you are ready for the Lord to be born. I need time. Oh boy do I need time, very serious prayer time. The gentle Jesus meek and mild is the most powerful force for change that I have ever encountered, and I need to get ready to - again! - have everything change. Everything. Every single thing.

2. I grew up on Christmas music, on Fred Waring's recordings that featured my grandfather's glorious baritone, and Robert Shaw's exquisite choral work. I love them. I do not have a bah! humbug! bone in my body. But raised as I was in a Reformed tradition, I spent my childhood being pounded from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve with "Christ is born" songs, when he wasn't yet, so what was Advent? and then it was Christmas Day and by Christmas afternoon, poof! it was over. What happened to the other 12 days? What do you mean, just a song?

3. Lent leads to joy, but it passes through great pain. Advent, too, moves soberly, but straight to joy.

Listen to the music?

“The world is not into hearing,” said Frank Gatson Jr., a choreographer for singers including Usher and Beyoncé. Referring to the recent “Beyoncé: B’day Anthology Video Album,” on which he worked, he added, “If she does it the right way, people won’t say, ‘Have you heard Beyoncé’s new music?,’ but ‘Have you seen the new Beyoncé?’ ”
by Claudia La Rocca, New York Times, September 5, 2007

I knew that. But, surprise! It is liberating in a way that I will try to get down to writing about soon. Stay tuned.

Back to the city

Fresh from a week at Ashokan that culminated in dancing my fool head off to the Texas Playboys - not a recording! Live! - I sang at the Cathedral yesterday morning one day ahead of a cough and a sore throat. I know what this is. It's the natural result of being overwhelmed by joy. The body says,"Captain, she canna take no more", and the dilithium crystals take a little nap, anad I come down with a little something that is enough to keep me quiet for a day or two.

Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp is heaven on earth. I mean something very specific by that, and I have to say it in the language I am comfortable with. It is an experience for me of the kingdom of heaven revealing itself to be right here, right now. Here. Now. Every here. Every now. In every one. That's the real world, and the challenge is to carry it with me, to remember this, and to revel in the accomplishments of my many companions in this life, and to share in their sorrows. And to dance.

I did take a break in my reading; after having devoted two months to the Onegoodbook experiment, I needed to come into something else. So I started Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing in the Streets, subtitled A History of Collective Joy. But it is really hard to read about dancing when just up the hill you can hear fiddles and a swinging rhythm section calling you to actually dance. So I put it aside till sometime later this summer (after Harry Potter, of course), and am about to re-immerse in scripture. But I am going for the gospels now. The more I read of the Old Testament, the more I long for the good news.

It is going to take me a few days to be posting on a semi-regular schedule. Looking forward...