It's here!!! We have NEW video footage to reflect the current touring theatrical production honoring the great American Icon, Lena Horne.
"Mary Wilson add's a theatrical flair to this recently revised production with glamorous gowns and dramatic enrances while the younger vocalist Paula West recounts Lena's younger years all with expert narration by biographer James Gavin and various multi-media images and video footage of Lena herself.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE NEW VIDEO DEMO
Halle Berry has been tapped to present a tribute to the late and great Lena Horne at the 2011 Oscars.
Call 202-337-414 for tickets today!
If Stormy Weather, James Gavin’s finely crafted biography of Lena Horne, doesn’t already hold a place of honor in your jazz library, now’s your chance to fill the gap with the paperback edition, published this month by Atria Books.
It may seem difficult to detect much similarity between Lena Horne and Gavin’s previous biographical subject, Chet Baker. Yes, both were startlingly beautiful (a claim Horne, unlike the ravaged Baker, could maintain until the onset, some years ago, of her fully-shuttered reclusion). More important, as Gavin so eloquently and candidly reveals, Horne was as much a tortured soul, as much a victim of self-condemnation and, ultimately, as much a disappointment to the immensity of her talent, as was Baker. Horne’s path from Greenwich Village’s Café Society to Hollywood at the height of MGM’s dream factory mystique, the world’s chicest night spots and, belatedly, Broadway superstardom, plus her late-to-the-movement yet fervent commitment to civil rights, paved the way for dozens of black entertainers. But Horne’s disgruntlement with so much of it – particularly what she justifiably perceived as MGM’s unwillingness to accept her as anything more than just a warbling objet d’art (one that could be easily excised when the films screened below the Mason-Dixon Line), and the well-heeled whiteness of the audiences that filled her club dates – boiled into lifelong bitterness and distrust. She was an absentee mother, a fickle friend (except to the one true love of her life, Billy Strayhorn, whom she openly admitted would have made the ideal spouse, if it weren’t for his sexual orientation), an apathetic lover and wife, and a fierce holder of grudges. Perhaps most startlingly, she was a richly gifted singer who considered her voice pedestrian (at least until her transition from cocktail party tunes to grittier fare in the late ’60s). Horne devotees will surely expect a glittering homage to their high priestess of icy sophistication. Instead, Gavin has the guts to reveal the scars and blemishes that Horne, like Dorian Gray, hoped would remain forever hidden behind a beautifully fabricated façade.
Concurrent with the paperback edition of Stormy Weather comes the releases of a new collection of early-career Horne recordings. Lena Horne Sings: The M-G-M Singles marks the first time that all 16 of Horne’s M-G-M sides from 1946-48 have been assembled on a single disc. There is a single track from 1946, featuring the 29-year-old Horne’s slinky interpretation of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” from the studio’s Jerome Kern showcase Till the Clouds Roll By. Bookending the set are two tracks from 1948, “Where or When” and “The Lady Is A Tramp,” performed by Horne in Words and Music, another of M-G-M’s all-star, highly fictionalized biopics, this time saluting Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.
The remaining 13 selections are culled from two separate sessions, held in October and December 1947 (with M-G-M, like every other record label, scrambling to complete recordings before a strike by the American Federation of Musicians ignited a recording ban on January 1, 1948), divided by a significant event in Horne’s life. In late October ’47, Horne set sail for her first European singing tour. Accompanying her was M-G-M music director Lennie Hayton. The pair planned to wed, but interracial marriages were then illegal in California so they opted to postpone the nuptials until they reached the continent (where the publicity glare would also be substantially dimmer). Also on board was pianist and bandleader Luther Henderson, who would serve as Hayton’s best man. Across the two recording sessions, Hayton and Henderson shared conducting duties, and Henderson also played on the majority of the tracks.
Still a relative newcomer to Hollywood, Horne sounds shy and somewhat tentative, lending a surprisingly girlish lilt to such Tin Pan Alley gems as “The Man I Love,” “Sometimes I’m Happy,” “I’ve Got the World on a String” and “A Foggy Day.” Early inklings of her lifelong admiration for Duke Ellington are clearly evident, with no fewer than four Ellington-related tunes spanning the two sessions, including “Take Love Easy,” “Something to Live For” (with lyrics by her beloved Strayhorn) plus the rarely recorded “He Makes Me Believe He’s Mine” and “Pass Me By” (written by Mercer Ellington with Hillis Walters). Most intriguing is a noirish number called “It’s Mad, Mad, Mad!” (not to be confused with the frantic “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” written by Mack David and Ernest Gold for the 1963 film of the same name, and popularized by Horne). Shades of the chilled hauteur that would later become integral to Horne’s mystique are evident as she hugs the tricky curves of the fog-bound Artie Shaw composition.
<Lena Horne Sings: The M-G-M Singles is the latest addition to Verve’s Hip-O Select collection of rare and historic recordings. Complete details, including ordering information, are available at that label's web site.
And if you happen to be in the DC area on Wednesday, May 5, you can share in a special celebration of Lena Horne at Blues Alley (202-337-4141), hosted by James Gavin and featuring performances by two of America’s premiere jazz vocalists, Boston’s first lady of song Rebecca Parris and one of the Bay Area’s finest, Paula West. Grammy-nominated pianist and music director George Mesterhazy has crafted superb new arrangements of such Horne signature tunes as “Honeysuckle Rose,” “As Long As I Live,” “Yesterday When I Was Young” and, of course, “Stormy Weather.” The first set begins at 8pm; with a second set at 10pm. Cover charge is $35.
If you’d like to share your comments about Lena Horne or have ideas for future installments of Hearing Voices, you can reach me at jtvocaljazz@gmail.com
The link directly to the article, click here.
By Camden Harbour Inn | Apr 16, 2010
Camden Harbour Inn is the proud sponsor of James Gavin's acclaimed Stormy Weather with New England's First Lady of Jazz Rebecca Parris.
Natalie's at Camden Harbour Inn offers a dinner package including a 3 course set dinner, premium seating for the show and a meet and greet cocktail party including complimentary hors d'oeuvres & book signing.
The show starts at 4pm and the cocktail party and dinner are after the show.
The package is available for $60 per person excluding taxes and gratuity.
Call today for reservations, we have limited availability. 207-236-7008
www.camdenharbourinn.com
To celebrate the paperback release of James Gavin’s acclaimed biography, Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne – one of Oprah’s Top 25 Summer Reads of 2009 – and to launch the new Verve CD, Lena Horne Sings: The M-G-M Singles Collection,
Sculler's Jazz Club will present the premiere followed by a performance
of the full length multi-media version at the Camden Opera House and
two shows at Blues Alley Washington DC. STORMY WEATHER is a truly
unique new concert presentation. STORMY WEATHER: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF LENA HORNE combining
live performances and Gavin’s narration to salute the musical legacy of
Hollywood’s first African-American goddess, a true living legend.
The show unites two eminent jazz singers whom Horne inspired. REBECCA PARRIS,
New England’s First Lady of Jazz, has won nine Boston Music Awards; her
earthy voice and interpretive depth made her a favorite of Stan Getz,
Carmen McRae, and Sarah Vaughan. With vibraphonist Gary Burton she
shared a GRP CD, It’s Another Day, and a PBS special. PAULA WEST’s dusky contralto has been called “a thing of beauty” inTime Out New York; her engagements at Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel have brought her annual raves in the New York Times,
which calls her “a swinging pop-jazz sophisticate in the tradition of
Lena Horne and Carmen McRae.” West has toured the world and appeared
onscreen in Bicentennial Man (with Robin Williams) and Teknolust (with Tilda Swinton). Grammy-nominated musical director/pianist GEORGE MESTERHAZY was called “superb” in the San Francisco Chronicle;
apart from years of work with West and Parris, he accompanied Shirley
Horn in the last phase of her career. Mesterhazy has written stunning
new arrangements of a dozen Horne trademarks, including “Honeysuckle
Rose,” “Yesterday When I Was Young,” “Bein’ Green,” and “Stormy
Weather.”
James Gavin’s writing has appeared in the New York Times,Vanity Fair, and the Huffington Post; his books include Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker. Stormy Weather (published by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster) was hailed as “definitive” by Vanity Fair;
wrote Liz Smith: “[It] may just be one of the best biographies about
show business, race, love, sex, and music ever written.” Gavin
co-produced Verve’s new Horne CD – the first complete reissue of her
historic work on the M-G-M label in the late ‘40s, during her reign at
the “Dream Factory” of movie musicals. Horne went on to become a fabled
nightclub seductress and civil-rights icon; in 1981 she opened the
biggest one-woman smash in Broadway history, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.
Now 92 and in reclusion for years, Horne remains a towering role model;
Janet Jackson, Halle Berry, and Alicia Keys are only three of the
younger stars who revere her.
