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Judy Kuhn at Iridium
The keeper of the flame knows how to keep
fire burning strong, can trust it to sometimes be effective as glowing embers,
and adds some heat of her own. The flame is the late Laura Nyro, and its
caring, canny keeper is Judy Kuhn. With Judy and her band, so ably led by
pianist-arranger (for most charts) Jeff Klitz, you are in good hands whether
you are a Nyro neophyte or a longtime Laura devotee like myself, who fell in
love with the singer-songwriter’s own recordings and the pop covers, and got to
experience her in concert. Near the top of her show, Judy charmingly admits to
being “obsessed” with Nyro. The material, often musically adventurous and
lyrically sometimes raw or enigmatic, could be daunting. The shadows of
singularly talented artists often are. Fortunately, her strong admiration and
respect have not resulted in intimidation or misguided attempts at
impersonation or excessively studious copycatting.
Yes, recalling the original
satisfying records, with some song structures, tempi, phrasing and specific use
of back-up vocals, an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra seems to be in
place. I’m a big fan of reinvention and re-interpreting, so my first few
hearings of the CD of this material caused some reservations about several of
the treatments being too conservative. I’ve been converted by exposure to the
point of putting it on my Top Ten list of albums I reviewed at the
TalkinBroadway website. In person, it’s very evident that this material has
gotten into the singer’s bones. The effect and power are cumulative as the show
goes on. A couple of numbers featuring
cello are especially moving.
I’m all for keeping the flame. Thankfully,
the Kuhn coup is not to appeal just to us converts, who come in already having
what admittedly is an acquired taste for some brilliant but complex songs. She
makes the esoteric material accessible without carrying a pitcher to water it
down or a bowl of sugar to sweeten it. A
more open and less fragile figure than her idol, she doesn’t project or imitate
a confessional or enigmatic style that makes an audience feel like concerned
voyeurs or outsiders. Join the circle of friends, not the small cult. In this
well-balanced chosen repertoire, the happier songs like “Luckie” burst with
life-affirming joy. Similarly, the quick-tempoed and catchy “California
Shoeshine Boys” does indeed shine, but not so blindingly that we could miss the
line “I got heartache.” What really glows is Judy Kuhn, looking radiant as her
face lights up with the pleasure of not just digging into the songbook, but
really sharing her joy. There’s time for a couple of interesting bits of Laura
lore, such as how she described her feelings about how songs should sound by
comparing them to colors, rather than with musical language.
Some will come in not knowing many of the
songs, many will know them more from cover versions by Barbra Streisand or
Linda Ronstadt (“Stoney End”), or The Fifth Dimension (“Stoned Soul Picnic,”
“Sweet Blindness”) or Blood, Sweat and Tears (“And When I Die”). The songs
still get sung: “Stoned Soul Picnic” is on the new album by the great jazz
group New York Voices, and last week I heard Maureen McGovern sing “And When I
Die” (“Who wrote that?” asked an
impressed new admirer sitting in front of me.
Wouldn’t he be even more overwhelmed to know she wrote the heavy duty
look at life and death at age sixteen, as Judy informs her audiences). But Judy does not just do the ones that were
picked up by other artists that have been more exposed or are more traditional
in structure. She impressively does some of the more unconventional and
challenging ones like “Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp.” And “Been on a Rain” is
devastating and beautifully etched. Pointing out that the message is still all
too relevant, she takes on the very early plea, “Save the Country.”
Of course, Judy Kuhn is not just a gifted
singer but also a stage actress (Chess,
Sunset Boulevard, Passion and the original and revival casts of Les Miserables) and there’s rich
material here for an actress in the Nyro oeuvre. A more self-indulgent
tragedienne could have a field day and leave an audience drained and depressed
by using and milking more of the harrowing and despair-drenched songs, but Judy
knows a little goes a long way. She chooses well. “Lonely Women” is haunting in
its sorrow, but also hypnotic. She also knows how to tell a story with a bigger
picture, so we tend to think of this being about a group of people rather than
a pathetic figure pointing the finger (or gun) at herself, bemoaning “poor me!”
The Iridium feels like a good fit for this
show. A big hall or teeny tiny cabaret space would be wrong for the
medium-sized band and the size of the emotions on display in the songs. At the
Iridium, the show gets the best of both worlds: the non-claustrophobic wider
space allows a comfortable and exciting rock club feel on the energetic numbers where the
band cooks. On sensitive songs, when the lights go down and the blazing fire
turns into a narrow burning laser beam, we’re all still close enough to easily
adjust to the tight focus. And the Iridium’s living history of jazz-soaked
nights, reminds us that Laura Nyro’s eclectic influences and flavors have jazz
as one important element.
But this is not the first meeting of Kuhn
and Nyro. She was part of a memorable stage production called Eli’s Coming and has brought the songs
to other venues (starting exactly a year ago this week, in fact, for a
one-nighter at Jazz At Lincoln Center). It was part of the important “American
Songbook” series, celebrating the craft; songwriters and their
interpreters. (It is about to begin
again for a long series of varied nights, starting with Deborah Voigt, and
including a Bernstein night, an encore of Eric Comstock’s Jule Styne tribute
and Christine Ebersole with Billy Stritch.)
The CD is called Serious Playground: The Songs Of Laura Nyro. It’s on the Ghostlight/ Sh-K-Boom label,
home for recent musical theatre cast albums and traditional and adventurous
vocal CDs by theatre artists branching out.
Judy
Kuhn has been performing on Thursdays at 7pm at Iridium on Broadway near
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