Posted at 9:18 am by Lee Lessack
Given the enduring influence of hip-hop, the splintering of musical audiences, and the evident changes in the music industry and wider American society since “the day the music died,” it’s not surprising that many have pronounced the Great American Songbook as extinct, or at the very least, teetering on the brink of survival. In 2008, I disagreed with this bleak outlook, and put together a show full of “new standards” to prove the point that well-written songs with meaningful lyrics were still being written, just waiting to be interpreted by thoughtful, jazz-inspired vocalists. “Standard Time” explored the subject of love and relationships through the Great American Songbook of the New Millenium, featuring songs written within the previous 20 years or so. Now, 15 years later, listening back to these songs confirms to me that my hypothesis was correct – many of these songs have actually become standards of a new generation.
Posted at 8:46 am by Lee Lessack
Review by John Hoglund in CABARET SCENES
D.C. Anderson, a versatile, award-winning singer/songwriter, has a full-time career as a working actor with an impressive résumé including THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, MARTIN GUERRE, PIPPIN and work with the Guthrie and Steppenwolf Theater companies. He has received a Bistro Award for singer/songwriter, multiple MAC Award nominations for male vocalist and song of the year and has recently been co-starring in the Broadway-bound ANNE OF GREEN GABLES at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut.
Anderson is a highly skilled interpretive singer who is able to make every word seem as if he were singing it right to the listener in the most intimate way. Isn’t that what great singing is all about? On HOUSE CONCERT, he weaves together 11 tracks that possess an emotional depth that is both profound and sincere. This is especially so in a slowed down reading of the album’s first cut, a perfectly phrased “Some Enchanted Evening” (Rodgers & Hammerstein). On “I Wanna Know You” from ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, with lyrics by Matte O’Brien and music by Matt Vinson, his delivery is riveting: “I want to know everything that you are, everything that you’ve been, everything you’ll be.”
His tone is flawless on his original lyric for “There Ain’t No Devil” (music by Bryce Kulak). In this haunting beauty, he intelligently caresses words without frills: “there ain’t no devil; only what’s been forgot/myths don’t die, the heart won’t lie/the deepest wish of the broken dish is the pieces find each other – when the one who broke it is gone, long gone.” It’s powerful. His original (co-written with his sister Claudia Anderson)“Song for Artists” is a tribute to artists everywhere:“This is my song to artists of all nations/borne of your love and dreams for all mankind.” He wraps it all up with the serene beauty of “Bright Angel” by Susan Osborn; …pensive and wistful “take my remains where the wild river runs and scatter them there in the dry desert air where the bright angel falls.”HOUSE CONCERT repeatedly underscores D.C. Anderson as an adept interpreter of the human heart, making it worthy of wide exposure.
Posted at 8:36 am by Lee Lessack
Find a quiet corner of your home.
Make a nest.
Listen through this album.
Experience love: anticipated, discovered, aligned, feared, challenged, accepted, denied, renewed, trusted. accepted.
D.C. Anderson’s voice possesses its usual tender exuberance. On this, following a dozen plus albums over a period of thirty years, nature has gifted it a resonant maturity – willing to go wherever the story takes it.
David Robison is at the piano. If you’ve seen him play, he appears to become a piano’s playful and necessary appendage. He is masterful here.
D.C.’s musical collaborator in years past, Lem Jay Ignacio, returns (along with son, Lemy) for Cole Porter’s ‘You Do Something to Me’. In the context of ‘sharing the night with darkness’, it might be considered the musical equivalent of a ‘dream sequence’.
Luke Wygodny (of the tremendous folk group THE HEARTSTRINGS PROJECT) composed two, and adds acoustic guitar to three, tracks. Audrey Q. Snyder adds her delicious cello to a few songs as well.
Songwriters collaborating with or covered by D.C. here are veteran tunesmiths Robert Sprayberry, Michele Brourman, Bryce Kulak, Steven Landau, Harry Chapin, Teresa Tudury, Luke Wygodny, Andrew Ratshin, Dick Gibbons and Bob Dylan.
Spend an afternoon with ‘sharing the night with darkness’ and discover why Stephen Mosher, of Broadway World described D.C.‘s voice (reviewing his 2022 LML MUSIC release HOUSE CONCERT) as ‘lovely, emotionally invested, articulate’ and D.C. in performance as ‘tender, theatrical and visceral’ with a ‘fine focus on the art of storytelling.’!
Posted at 11:27 pm by Lee Lessack
First Harvest, debut album of Elizabeth Ward Land, beautifully showcases her thrilling voice, extraordinary interpretive gifts and vast range of musical expertise. For Broadway fans, Liz’s opening track reveals surprising depth in A Change in Me from Beauty and the Beast.
