Judy Kuhn - Rodgers, Rodgers & Guettel

Styles: Pop-Jazz Vocals
Year: 2015
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 45:12
Size: 103,9 MB
Art: Front

(6:54)  1. Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' / The Call
(2:43)  2. Am I?
(1:35)  3. This Can't Be Love
(2:58)  4. Dividing Day
(5:17)  5. Nobody's Heart / Hey, Love / Love to Me
(2:41)  6. If You Ask Me
(2:50)  7. Migratory V
(4:11)  8. We're Gonna Be All Right
(2:22)  9. Daybreak
(3:04) 10. Through the Mountain
(3:42) 11. Song of Love / A Wonderful Guy
(3:26) 12. Hello, Young Lovers
(3:22) 13. Hero and Leander

The elder Rodgers's classic "Hello, Young Lovers" is followed by his grandson's luminous song of love at its purest "Hero and Leander"; pairing Oklahoma!'s "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" alongside Floyd Collins's "The Call," Kuhn unearths an optimism - and a sound - common to both. And in a felicitous wedding of Richard Rodgers's "Nobody's Heart," Mary Rodgers's "Hey, Love" and Guettel's "Love to Me," Kuhn weaves a tale of love in its many guises: disillusion that gives way to expectation, yearning that culminates in joy and fulfillment. Rodgers, Rodgers & Guettel features music direction by Todd Almond and orchestrations by Joshua Clayton, plus guest appearances by Malcolm Gets and Shuler Hensley. But the spotlight remains focused on Kuhn, whom The New York Times, in reviewing the evening at Lincoln Center, hailed as "a top-of-the-line singer whose approach might be described as one of passionate restraint... conveying as much insight and empathy as more overtly dramatic singers without straining for a show-stopping theatricality; her delivery is refined but not prim, her intonation impeccable." http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rodgers-Guettel-Judy-Kuhn/dp/B00UIC53XO

Rodgers, Rodgers & Guettel

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Judy Kuhn - Serious Playground: The Songs Of Laura Nyro

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 51:00
Size: 116.8 MB
Styles: Pop-jazz vocals
Year: 2007
Art: Front

[3:23] 1. Blackpatch
[4:04] 2. Sweet Blindness
[3:23] 3. Stoney End
[3:23] 4. To A Child
[2:18] 5. California Shoeshine Boys
[3:20] 6. Stoned Soul Picnic
[4:39] 7. Lonely Woman
[5:07] 8. Been On A Train
[3:42] 9. Mother's Spiritual
[2:46] 10. Luckie
[3:40] 11. Capt. St. Lucifer
[3:30] 12. Upstairs By A Chinese Lamp
[3:52] 13. Buy And Sell
[3:45] 14. Save The Country

As a singer and songwriter, Laura Nyro was the equal of Carole King and Joni Mitchell. Yet, while we discovered King and Mitchell’s compositions from their own albums, most of us learned Nyro’s songs through hit covers from the likes of the 5th Dimension, Barbra Streisand and Three Dog Night. So, though most of Nyro’s albums are available on CD, her work (or, at least, a small slice of it) survives largely as fodder for Golden Oldies stations. Fortunately, venerable music theater performer Judy Kuhn has opted to dig deeper, mixing the familiar with the comparatively obscure to salute the remarkable depth and breadth of the Nyro songbook.

Interestingly, Kuhn sounds akin to the Tapestry-era King as she examines the many facets of a richly versatile writer who was equally skilled at exploring the giddiness of communal tipsiness (“Sweet Blindness”) and the darkness of fatal drug abuse (“Been On a Train”), the joy of motherhood (“To a Child,” “Mother’s Spiritual”) and the temptation of demons (“Captain Saint Lucifer”), the cacophonous underbelly of her native New York (“Buy and Sell”) and the social unrest of her generation (“Save the Country”). Listening to Nyro filtered through Kuhn, it’s hard not to be reminded of composer Jonathan Larson’s Rent. And the parallel seems apt, party because of Kuhn’s innate theatricality, but more because Nyro and Larson, though separated by several decades, embraced many of the same themes—New York as a creative melting pot, sexual freedom, the incomparable value of friendship, the lights at the end of dark tunnels, internal and external quests for peace, love and understanding—in their passionately-woven songs. And both died far too young. ~Thomas Conrad

Serious Playground: The Songs Of Laura Nyro

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