Having to narrow down Stephen Sondheim’s remarkable repertoire to just 11 songs was “an almost impossibly tough task” says singer Ian Shaw. His consummate exploration of the work of the late American composer, who revolutionised American musical theatre, brings out the “rolling energy” of classics such as Being Alive and Anyone Can Whistle.
Shaw, twice winner of the BBC Jazz Award, will launch his splendid new album Stephensong: Ian Shaw Sings Stephen Sondheim with a special concert at King’s Place on Thursday 27 November, the eve of the album’s official launch by Silent Wish Records.
Sondheim, who was 91 when he died in November 2021, won an Oscar, eight Tony Awards, Oscar, eight Grammy trophies, a Golden Globe, five Laurence Olivier awards and the Pulitzer Prize. The New Yorker wrote the sort of sharp, sophisticated and knowing lyrics that suit Shaw’s storyteller’s instincts. “I had more than 50 songs that worked out of context from the shows and I whittled them down to a final selection that seemed very contemporaneous in their lyrical enlightenment – covering themes such as protection and children,” Shaw tells London Jazz. “Although the 11 songs are very singular, I was conscious that I didn’t want to record a sort of a chronology, encyclopaedic collection or a compendium of his work.” Of the 16 songs Shaw actually recorded, the ones held back included Broadway Baby. “Although it’s undeniably a jazz standard, in the end I thought it stuck out as a sort of pointless bit of bling,” Shaws adds, with a laugh.
The songs that did make the final pressing – Everybody Says Don’t, No One is Alone, Take Me to the World, Marry Me a Little, I Remember, Another Hundred People, Being Alive, Good Thing Going, Merrily We Roll Along, Anyone Can Whistle, Children Will Listen and Somewhere – suit Shaw’s ability to be versatile. He is a brilliant vocal chameleon and his delivery ranges from witty to joyous to achingly tender.
Did the Welsh-born musician ever meet Sondheim? “I met him twice,” Shaw recalls. “Once in London and once in New York. In London, it was in rather strange circumstances, when I was singing at the premiere of the movie Postcards from the Edge in 1990. Sondheim had written some lyrics for Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine’s characters but they wanted a male singer at the event. I met Stephen and Princess Diana on that same eventful night. He just said one thing to me, which was, ‘Have you recorded my music?’ I suppose it could have meant, ‘If not, don’t’, but I think he was being really nice. About six years later, I met him at a friend’s house in New York and he was again very, very pleasant. It was one of those sing-around-the piano-in-the-basement gatherings in one of those classic Brownstone houses down in the village. The great singer Marnie Nixon was there and I was just as excited about meeting her.”
Although Shaw jokes that he is not a “huge fan” of musical theatre (leaving aside Oklahoma, and Little Shop of Horrors) he has always loved Sondheim’s clever sensibility. So when Shaw’s long-term musical arranger and pianist Barry Green suggested covering a collection of Sondheim’s work, the proposal quickly took hold. “It was Barry’s idea,” adds Shaw, who has already recorded albums dedicated to the work of folk singer Joni Mitchell and another to the music of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. “Barry gave me an arrangement of Anyone Can Whistle and it went down really well at Ronnie Scott’s. Barry is a fantastic pianist and superb at building the landscape of the songs.”
One of the most challenging reimaginings of Sondheim’s iconic back catalogue came with the moving No One is Alone, a song that former President Barack Obama quoted during a speech at the tenth anniversary of 9/11. “I found that recording quite difficult because my friend Jacqui Dankworth owns that song and even sang it at last month’s memorial for her mother Cleo Laine, an event I was honoured to host,” Shaw remarks.
Stephensong was recorded at Echo Zoo Studio, which specialises in vintage microphones and equipment, and the arrangements were settled in one rehearsal. Shaw says he was also tested to the limit by singing Good Thing Going. “That was hard as well,” remarks Shaw,” because it was one of the ones with lots of space and knowing quite how to phrase the words without messing up what Sondheim would have wanted it to sound like was a good test.”
Sondheim excelled at wry, affectionate and sometimes bleak investigations of American middle-class mores and he was also a man who represented the heartbeat of humane, thoughtful America. His moral sensibilities chime with Shaw, a committed activist, particularly for refugee causes. “The lyrics of Take Me to the World are very resonant now,” he says. “I am a passionate supporter of Free Palestine, and I always have been. My dad was a staunch socialist and Welsh steelworker and a person very interested in fairness and equality. He passed on a lot of those values and there is a lot of that integrity in Sondheim’s songs. Some of them, like Children Will Listen, have an almost magical, silent aura of protection.”
Shaw displays a wonderful enthusiasm for music on and off stage. When he talks about musicians he reveres, the respect and admiration shine through. As it happens, we share an eclectic taste in music and are both fans of the jazz of Bill Evans and the pop of Rickie Lee Jones. Shaw talks enthusiastically about Evans’s solo Verve album Alone. Hesays that his “go-to” choice of music if he has friends around are the early recordings of Jones. “Rickie Lee Jones is phenomenal,” he adds.
Phenomenal is a word that fits Sondheim perfectly, of course, and King’s Place will be a wonderful setting for charismatic live performer Shaw – accompanied by Green – to showcase the American’s music. Shaw calls the Kings Cross venue “an amazing space to put on music”. It was where he held his 60th birthday celebrations in 2023. The concert will be followed in the new year by a UK tour to promote Stephensong. He says that they will handpick venues that have the sort of top-class piano worthy of Sondheim’s music.
One of the many treats of the album is the version of I Remember, a song taken from a 1966 made-for-television movie called Evening Primrose, starring Psycho actor Anthony Perkins. “It’s a stunning song from a fascinating film that I have watched so many times,” says Shaw. One of the strengths of Stephensong is that the tracks have been plucked from such different, interesting sources. Take Me to the World was also written for that obscure television musical and is a composition, Shaw explains, that features the “powerful lyrics” such as “a world that smiles with streets instead of aisles.”
Sondheim may have written songs that are tough to sing but Shaw believes that context is everything when you are paying tribute to a man who demonstrated an almost visceral feeling of being alive. “I love the way that his lyrics are set up, with the narrative going into the song,” Shaw explains. “Sondheim’s lyrics are very real and touch on so many of the insecurities that every human being has, including ones some of us don’t want to admit revealing. He really is telling everyone’s story.” To back up his point, Shaw cites a potent verse in Being Alive:
“Someone to hold you too close
Someone to hurt you too deep
Someone to sit in your chair
To ruin your sleep.”
It is no surprise that Shaw uses this as an example of Sondheim’s wondrous gift of being able to write lyrics that are “poetic and conversational at the same time”. In Stephensong, Shaw has found a way to put his own special thumbprint on such beautifully melodic, meaningful music. King’s Place will certainly have a good thing going later this month.
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