From: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org (lucy-list-digest) To: lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: lucy-list-digest V2 #93 Reply-To: lucy-list@smoe.org Sender: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-lucy-list-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk lucy-list-digest Wednesday, April 12 2000 Volume 02 : Number 093 In this issue: [lucy-list] Review of Albany Show [lucy-list] The Artist's Profile ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 23:20:25 EDT From: SpecGlobal@aol.com Subject: [lucy-list] Review of Albany Show Hi all, A good friend just sent me the following review of Lucy's Albany show. Any review that leaves me with a big grin like this one did just has to be shared. Harvey GRACEFUL EMBRACE Lucy Kaplansky THE EIGHTH STEP In Between, April 1 Early in her Saturday night show at the Eighth Step, folksinger Lucy Kaplansky noted the irony of performing "The Angels Rejoiced," written by the Louvin Brothers. "Gospel bluegrass is one of my favorite things to sing, which is strange, because I'm a nice Jewish girl," she said cheerfully. "I feel a little guilty singing it--especially in a church--but what the hell." Kaplansky's willingness to follow her muse in unexpected directions has been the driving force in her singular career. After achieving notoriety on the New York folk scene in the '80s, she quit music to become a psychologist, then drifted back into performing in the early '90s. Perhaps because she was away from music for several years, she sings with a special kind of conviction; the intimacy between Kaplansky and her music is so palpable that it extends to the audience, with the singer drawing listeners into a warm sonic embrace. Even when she stood virtually motionless on Saturday night, she exuded energy. As she strummed, picked and slapped her acoustic guitar, all the while tapping out rhythms with her feet--Kaplansky conjured propulsive grooves, delicate melodies and deceptively simple vocal parts. Her singing was sharp and focused, but she also opened up her voice to let haunting words linger, convey vulnerability or punch the anger of a scalding lyric. Kaplansky's subject matter spanned the empty rewards of selling out ("End of the Day"), the soul-changing power of romantic connection ("Ten Year Night") and the bravery of a friend who left a lucrative career to find herself ("Five in the Morning"). She told modern stories and ancient ones, comfortably shifting from a song about a contemporary love affair ("Scorpion") to a song about Biblical times (Richard Shindell's "Ballad of Mary Magdalen"). Her voice suited the old and the new, because her smooth phrasing was timeless; whereas other singers force extra notes and nuances onto lyrics to overstate emotion, Kaplansky finds the true hearts of songs and sings them purely. While she sang several cover tunes and also shifted occasionally to an electric piano, the most vivid moments of the show involved Kaplansky, her guitar and her precious songwriting. On soft-spoken numbers including "For Once in Your Life," she presented melodies that glided from chord to chord as gracefully as beams of sunlight dripping through clouds. Her lyrics, composed with husband Richard Litvin, were smartly observational and poetic; Kaplansky spent as much time exposing her own soul as she did exploring those of the characters in her songs. By the time she closed with a pair of gorgeous Robin Batteau ballads--"Guinevere" and "The Eyes of My Beholder" (which was performed a cappella)--Kaplansky had cast a spell over the sizable crowd that gathered for her first-ever headlining gig in Albany. After taking listeners on a journey through myriad genres and moods, with the tangible emotion in her voice connecting the show's varied sensations, she left the stage with the grace of a dream reaching its happy ending. -Peter Hanson, Metroland 4/6/00 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 23:27:28 -0700 From: Tom Negrino Subject: [lucy-list] The Artist's Profile For those who have seen Lucy's announcement about her upcoming PBS show, I thought that I'd add a bit of detail. My local PBS stations don't list this show or its air date yet, so I did a Web search, and found this: http://www.theartistsprofile.com/kaplansky.htm It refers to a video of the show that is (or maybe will be?) for sale. A review I found of some of the other The Artist's Profile shows says that PBS is running a half-hour version of the shows; The Artist's Profile Web site lists the Lucy show as 69 minutes. Here's that review: http://www.innerviews.org/reviews/profile.html Enjoy... Tom ------------------------------ End of lucy-list-digest V2 #93 ****************************** This has been a posting from the Lucy Kaplansky mail list digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe lucy-list-digest" in the body of the message