About a year ago my music streaming service featured a singer I had never heard of: Nancy LaMott. She was singing, "I Have Dreamed," one of my favorite Richard Rodgers' songs. It is from The King and I, a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. LaMott's treatment was so original, it was as though I was hearing the song for the first time.
Later, I learned that LaMott's pianist and arranger was Christopher Marlowe, and as I listened to song after song it was clear that Marlowe not only understood the nuances of LaMott's voice, he was in love with the incredible expressive range she could attain vocally and emotionally. Consequently, it doesn't matter if there is an orchestra, one or a few instruments, or just Marlowe and LaMott, something emerges that is singular, original, and inspiring. This team found a path unlike any other duo, but make no mistake, Nancy LaMott's charismatic presence shines through as the brightest star in a constellation, harmonizing with the universe, but sadly it was to be like a shooting star with its brilliant streak across the universe, and then vanishes. She died at the height of a career that was soaring.
The miracle is that there were luminaries who recognized this rare phenomenon, and made sure her work was recorded. The producer/composer David Friedman set up a record label for LaMott. He wrote many of his songs just for LaMott. Jonathan Schwartz, the radio personality, featured her on many of his shows. Friedman wrote some of his best songs for LaMott including Your Love, Listen to My Heart, and I'll Be Here with You. She came to the attention of Peter Matz, who featured her in a concert in Los Angeles, and later, orchestrated her fifth album Listen To My Heart. Fortunately the vision of these composers/arrangers scheduled her in recording studios enough to produce three more albums posthumously.
She became a close friend of the actor Peter Zapp. He was always at her side, and stayed with her through her battle with cancer. They married an hour before her death in 1995, such a tragic loss to the world and to music.
All of this is background to my adventure with Nancy LaMott. At first, it was as though her art invaded my consciousness, but later it was as if I had fallen through some wormhole and became vividly present in every syllable Nancy LaMott sings. But I also observe that I am just as moved by the pianist Christopher Marlowe and his highly original settings that bring out the best in LaMott.
Technology opens dimensions that we enter even though we don't immediately perceive the difference from the three dimensional world we occupy. Some refer to it as a fourth dimension, as Time, but Time itself has many dimensions. Our attempts to characterize Time as linear is both naive and comical. We perceive that technology is transforming our world, but the rate of change is so astonishing that we need other tools besides logic, artificial intelligence and wishes.
We know that somewhere in the answer is our ability to be fully in the moment. Awareness is a dimension that transcends all others. We don't fully understand the mind that mercurially transcends boundaries to enter new dimensions available only through conscious awareness. ALL KNOWLEDGE IS PERSONAL. We don't comprehend how this connects one to the many, or connects us to each other. My own sense is that Entanglement is a universal Thread connecting everything to everything, constituting Infinity...experienced personally as conscious awareness.
This is an elaborate way of saying that through the artistry of her voice, and the concinnity of Christopher Marlow's interaction with LaMott's exceptional talent and her unlimited expressive range, connect infinite, yet singular moments as sound in time... Infinity expressed in singular beauty, thrilling and touching us with an awareness of who we are and where we are traveling emotionally in our moment of being there with LaMott and Marlowe.
Words cannot replace music.
The first song I heard from LaMott on my music server (by chance) was I Have Dreamed, one of my favorites of Rodgers and Hammerstein. It begins with a simple arpeggiated piano accompaniment, elegantly subdued as though we were hearing this in the dusk of evening, her voice is soft, contemplative as she intones "I would love being loved by you." As the verse begins with "Alone and awake..." we feel her isolation dissolve in her growing awareness of her connection to her absent love. Her dreams awaken her awareness of the reality of her true love, sharing their place in a welcoming universe. In "How you look in the glow of evening," her dream transforms into the presence of their love. LaMott achieves this through control of the color and strength of her voice...achieving a subtle but effective climax as she returns to and concludes with the original, softly nuanced "I would love being loved by you."
This was followed by LaMott and Marlowe's collaboration of It Might As Well Be Spring. LaMott's simple straightforward articulation of this classic seems to come to a close as though a brief interlude in a set of songs.
But no--- Marlowe provides a most provocative bridge that seemed to say isn't there a bit of Gershwin sleeping inside this Rodgers and Hammerstein classic? Instead of closing, the piano gradually explores Rhapsody in Blue fragments. Quite possibly hasn't Gershwin replaced Marlowe at the keyboard? As Lamott returns, this transformation seems to triumph in slight references to Gershwinesque idioms, trills, arpeggios, minor thirds all underscoring the innate restlessness of someone under the spell of Spring Fever, even though "it isn't really spring." Give Christopher Marlowe an academy award for this gem. No orchestra... just Marlowe and LaMott making a miracle.
OK. "If they asked me, I could write a book" about the genius duo of LaMott and Marlowe. I am tempted to describe their collaboration that combines two Sondheim songs, Good Thing Going/Not A Day Goes By, but just find this and listen to this genius duo assisted by the eloquence of a cello. You will discover new things in this song that might not have existed even for Sondheim.
The beauty of music performers is that they keep unveiling new meanings to songs we know and love as they pursue these classics in a new time and place. This trio, revealing nuances and depths of Sondheim, add to the luster of memory and anticipation of new, personal discoveries.
I admit I get lost in the cabaret brilliance of Nancy LaMott and her collaborators.
But I also suffer a bit of anguish and regret. Nancy LaMott was reaching the zenith of her career and a leading performer in the cabaret scene of New York City, just minutes away from where I was living and working at New York University.
I never knew what I was missing and what I missed, until now.
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