Tune-tastings 4/7/06
This is the best part of a country spring - warm enough in the daytime that flowers are blooming, cool enough at night that sleep comes easy and the down comforter really is a comfort. With the mental acuity that comes with that easy sleep (OK, and good coffee, too) I am putting final touches on a new show - Made in America - that I am going to be doing later in the month in New Jersey and in Milwaukee, and also starting to tinker with Foreign Correspondence, which will see its debut in Spencertown, NY in June. The first show is devoted to songs written by American composers, some well-known, some quite obscure. The other program will feature songs from and about other places. It had its genesis in a pair of songs that I sang last year at the Cabaret Conference at Yale. "In Moscow" and "Dublin in the Rain" were both written by Carol Hall and Tex Arnold; they each evoke that powerful "spirit of place" that I find compelling. I thought then about doing a sort of personal travelogue, made a list of all the foreign-language songs I knew,or sort-of knew, and the tunes about places I know and love, and put it away in a journal for the right moment. Impossible not to notice that there are a lot of songs about Paris. The task has been to find the one or two that taste most right, and real.
Actually, that's always the task, with every piece of material. I am always stalking the song that tastes real. It's difficult to convince an audience that something is organic that actually tastes like chemicals to me.
I admire singers who can put me in that real moment, into the feeling of the song, and am especially grateful for those who can turn the prism to show me something at a new angle and in a new light. Last summer I had rather a transcendent experience of that - I heard Sharon McKnight sing a "Just a Housewife" from the musical Working, a song that has never appealed to me musically or lyrically. But Sharon has the artistry to reveal what I had not seen/heard before. It was a ferocious performance. She made it taste real.
Back to work now. Gentle Readers, go get yourselves an organic apple. Or some Terra Nostra chocolate. And blessings on your day.