“Playing with this many great musicians gives me so many more colors to play with, and I have so many more colors in my crayon box.  I have a lot of fun with this horn section and the percussionist. I am really having a good time,” says the supremely talented jazz vocalist Amy London in talking about her new album When I Look In Your Eyes.

The CD opens with London powerfully and emotively singing the swinging, Ira and George Gershwin tune “There’s A Boat That’s Leavin’ Soon.” London’s studio performance is energetic, and presents the listener with a very live concert experience. The artists, to whom she was referring earlier, also turn in a wonderful performance, as they create a big band, full orchestral feel, despite the fact that this was a nine-piece ensemble. For this recording, London used two different pianists, John Hicks, and Lee Musiker, her husband Roni Ben-Hur, on guitar, one of music’s top bassists Rufus Reid, drummer Leroy Williams, percussionist Steve Kroon, Richie Vitale on trumpet, Chris Byars who tripled on tenor and alto saxophone as well as the flute, Dan Greenblatt doubling on tenor and soprano saxophone and trombonist John Mosca.

“At a certain point, about five years into my experience singing in clubs in New York, I realized that I wanted to try to aim for live performances that were recording worthy, and vice versa, recordings that were as much like a live performance as possible. “Being in the moment,” became a clear process for me, and the means through which I would work to achieve this goal,” says London.

As for her CD When I Look In Your Eyes, London says, “Essentially, it was recorded live. We were all in booths in the studio, but there was very little overdubbing, and a lot of it was first or second takes. Generally speaking, when I go into the studio, I am a first take kind of a girl. In my opinion if you keep doing it over and over again, trying to fix mistakes, it just keeps getting worse. I prefer the freshness of the first take. I like the spontaneity of it. Bennett Studios is a really wonderful place and the engineer Dave Kowalski, is a dream engineer. He has good ears and he is a super nice guy. He knows exactly what to do to make you feel comfortable.” 

There are other reasons that the album comes off with such a big band sound, and Amy London likes to give credit to Chris Byars who wrote seven of the arrangements for the record. Her friendship with Byars dates back to the year 2000, when Byars hired London to be the vocalist for his little big band.

“Chris can write for anything. He can write for a symphony, a big band, or he can write for six, five or three horns. Chris carries a lot of Ted Dameron with him, and he is also a big Elmo Hope fan. He is in the same ballpark as I am artistically,” she says.

It is however, with songs such as “Wonderful, Wonderful,” that something else becomes immediately apparent about Amy London’s vocal presentation, and that is her ability to create the sense for the listener that you are in the front row listening to a Broadway production.  That illusion is not accidental, for she spent three years as a member of the cast for the Cy Coleman’s (music) / David Zippel’s (lyrics) Broadway musical, City Of Angels, based on the book by Larry Gelbart. City of Angels was the recipient of five Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Score. London’s vocals appear on the Columbia Records soundtrack for the musical.

London, who had built a solid reputation in New York City, during the 1980’s as a good vocalist recalls that day in 1989 when her phone rang, “(I was asked), ‘Amy, would you like to audition for a Broadway play?’ I thought, (she says tongue firmly planted in her cheek), let me think about it for two weeks. Of course, I would. I nailed the audition. I later learned from Cy Coleman that he had built a group around my voice, which was incredibly flattering. It was an amazing, stellar gig.”

London’s exposure to the stage was cultivated early in life, when she took drama classes during her childhood years. Later she attended Syracuse College in upstate New York, where she enrolled as a musical theater major, before switching to the music program fulltime during her second year.

London credits her drama classes at Syracuse, where she studied the Constantin Stanislavski method acting approach to performance, with assisting her in the approach that she now takes with her music.  

“Uta Hagen wrote a book called Respect For Acting, which I still have up on my bookshelf. It is very much about being in the moment, using your senses and your sensory memory to recall a situation in your life that will bring back an emotion. It is something that I use as a technique when I am performing. I use sensory memory when I am performing to keep my interpretations fresh. The memories may change, because if you have to sing a song one hundred times, you need to find a way to make it fresh every time. I teach my students (London is a vocal instructor), to be in the moment, to make it fresh, and to dig a little deeper into their interpretations. Being in the moment is important for any performer,” she says.

Including the song, “Lazy Susan,” among the tracks for When I Look In Your Eyes, was inspired primarily, because of London’s lifelong love affair with the music of the songwriter Laura Nyro. London remembers when her fascination with Nyro’s music first began, “When I was very young, my sister brought me this record of Laura Nyro, whose first record had just come out. I played it over and over again on the record player. I learned every note, and I became a Laura Nyro freak,” says London.

Some readers may not be familiar with the name of Laura Nyro, but undoubtedly, you will recognize some of the fabulous tunes that she penned for people like the Fifth Dimension, Three Dog Night, Peter, Paul & Mary and Barbara Streisand. Nyro was the songwriter behind songs such as, “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Stone Soul Picnic,” “And When I Die,” and “Hands Off The Man (Flim Flam Man).”

London says, “It is interesting now to go back and listen to Laura’s music, because I think that she was greatly influenced by jazz standards. There is no question about it. Her arrangements used horns in a similar way as did some of the classic jazz recordings. Laura Nyro is the one who is most connected to the sound of the Great American Songbook of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. She (Laura Nyro) would be in the middle of a ballad and then cut into a swinging tempo, and then back to a ballad.”

London also confesses to being influenced by the music of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Carole King.

For all the influences that have come to bear on Amy London, she could not have pulled off a spectacular album such as When I Look In Your Eyes, without the support and creativity of the wonderful musicians who formed the band. She loved the playing of percussionist Steve Kroon so much, she even left in his count off, which serves as the lead into the lively, and Afro Cuban flavored, “Wouldn’t You?” Roni Ben-Hur lays down an outstanding guitar solo for the tune, “Wouldn’t It Be So Nice?”

When I suggested to London that having a bass player like Rufus Reid appear on When I Look In Your Eyes, was a major coup, she was quick to both agree and expound upon the double bass player’s contributions, “Rufus is such an expert, such a master of the bass. He is so solid. The bass player should be the anchor of the band, and if Rufus is in the room, you know that you can lean on him. He is one hundred percent dependable, in whatever situation that you are in with him. On this project Rufus would be the first one to get to the studio and the last one to leave. We would be having coffee and bagels, and Rufus would be in his booth warming up. I think that when an artist can capture being in the moment (like he does), just make the music perform in the moment, and react in the moment, you can attain a very high level. On top of those gorgeous moments are his technique and his ability.”

Whether Amy London is doing a comedic re-enactment of competing with a cappuccino machine in a coffee shop, as she did at one point very early in her career, or she is talking about her husband and two daughters, it is obvious that she is having the time of her life.

London has learned a lot of lessons throughout her career, but there seems to be one that always comes to the forefront, “As an artist, when you get up on the stage, I think that it is really important to maintain the element of fun that you experienced when as a child, you fell in love with music for the first time. If you can hang onto that for your entire life, you are going to have a good time with it. It is good to be serious, it is good to try and have intellect on the bandstand, intellect with your music, to try and do something different and challenging, but you have to retain the element of fun. If you lose that, I think that it becomes a little boring for the audience.”

Interview by Joe Montague for Riveting Riffs (www.rivetingriffs.com) ©

February 2008

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