JUDY KUHN RETURNS "SERIOUS PLAYGROUND - THE SONGS OF LAURA NYRO"
Judy Kuhn, the acclaimed actress and singer, will bring her show "Serious
Playground - The Songs of Laura Nyro" back to New York in the new year.
Kuhn is currently starring on Broadway in the musical Les Miserables
and makes a cameo appearance in the current box office smash Enchanted.
After a sold-out run this fall, the show will be performed to the IRIDIUM
JAZZ CLUB (1650 Broadway, NYC - 212-582-2121 -
http://www.iridiumjazzclub.com/
) on Thursdays at 7:00 pm from January 10th through 31st. The show is
based on her new CD of the same name, released this fall by Ghostlight
Records, the first-ever solo CD celebrating the pioneering singer-songwriter
of the 1960s and 70s, who would have turned 60 this fall. The CD was
produced by Music Director Jeffrey Klitz and Joel Moss, with Mr. Klitz
leading an eight-piece band. Kurt Deutsch and Ms. Kuhn serve as executive
producers.
The recording is based on her sold-out concert at the
Lincoln Center American Songbook Series in January 2007. That concert
followed Judy's Obie Award-winning role in the Off Broadway production
of Eli's Comin' at the Vineyard Theatre, which inspired her passion
for Nyro's music.
Serious Playground features fresh arrangements of Nyro's
best-known songs like "Stoney End," "Sweet Blindness" and "Save The
Country," but also offers new interpretations of rarely-recorded songs
like "To A Child," "Mother's Spiritual" and "Been On A Train." "Lonely
Women," spare and haunted on Nyro's album Eli and the Thirteenth Confession
- widely considered her masterpiece - here has the feel of a hard
blues. "Upstairs By A Chinese Lamp," named an all-time favorite by
Rickie Lee Jones, is given a delicate treatment, as if part of a chamber
opera. "Save The Country," whose potent anti-war message had a particular
impact during the tumultuous Vietnam era, has a renewed relevance
in the current political climate.
Laura Nyro is regarded as one of the most original voices
of popular music. Her compositions - which fused gospel, soul, folk,
and jazz - were hit records for artists including Barbra Streisand,
The Fifth Dimension, Blood Sweat & Tears, and Three Dog Night. Nyro's
own recordings, though not chart-toppers, have long been favorites
with musicians and critics. Along with the likes of Joni Mitchell,
Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, she helped to create the very idea of
the contemporary singer/songwriter.
Judy Kuhn has been nominated for three Tony Awards and
three Drama Desk Awards for her work on Broadway in the hit revival
of She Loves Me, the American premiers of Chess and Les Miserables,
and Rags. She is the singing voice of Disney's Pocahontas and co-starred
in the upcoming film Day on Fire, for which she also performed the
soundtrack with John Medeski.
Also on Broadway she appeared in Richard Nelson's play
Two Shakespearean Actors (Lincoln Center Theatre), Alan Menken & Tim
Rice's King David, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Most recently she
appeared in a new adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters by Craig Lucas
at the Intiman Theatre directed by Bartlett Sher, and co-starred in
the world premiere of Michael John LaChiusa's The Highest Yellow at
the Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA. She played Fosca in the critically
acclaimed production of Passion at the Kennedy Center's Sondheim Celebration,
and created the role of Betty Schaefer in the U.S. premiere of Sunset
Boulevard in Los Angeles.
In London's West End she starred in Metropolis for which
she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. Other theatre includes
the title role in The Ballad of Little Jo at the Steppenwolf Theatre
Co.(Jeff Award Nomination), As Thousand's Cheer (Drama Dept.), Dream
True (Vineyard Theatre), Strike Up the Band (Encores!), The Glass
Menagerie (McCarter Theatre), Martin Guerre (Hartford Stage), and
Martha Clarke's Endangered Species (BAM).
All shows have a $30 cover and a $10 minimum.
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