Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Compared To Ella
Ann Hampton Callaway is modern-day jazz great
Being called a Renaissance woman might be daunting — for someone else. But Ann Hampton Callaway doesn’t shy away from the description. Although she is best known for her voice — The New York Times once wrote that for “sheer vocal beauty, no contemporary singer matches Ms. Callaway” — she is also a pianist, a poet, a photographer and dreamed of being president, an actor, a “serious composer” like George Gershwin and even a therapist. “I love getting inside a person and finding where they’re broken and helping them become whole again.”
Perhaps that’s the mission behind Callaway’s “Jazz Goes to the Movies,” the show she’ll perform Feb. 18 at the Blue Lion at UAFS Downtown in Fort Smith. The songs, she says, date back to the 1930s and ’40s, a time “when the world was going through challenging issues and these incredible songwriters were writing songs that gave us hope, were profound, kindled our dreams.” Personally, facing the challenge of the current tumultuous world, she loves escaping into that music and “helping raise the spirits of my audiences with beautiful songs that have tremendous meaning and artistry.”
But don’t think Callaway just regurgitates a song, no matter how successful it was. She makes each of them her own.
“I study the lyric, the different emotions, the story and how it makes me feel, how do I relate to it in my life, then I go to the piano and start exploring, trying different keys, different feels — swing, ballad, something a little Brazilian,” she describes. “I look for a verse, and the verse makes the music and the story so clear. When I arranged ‘Blue Skies,’ I wanted it to be real emotional plotline, then this sort of slow awakening, this feeling of hope, and when you own that hope, it gives you a release of freedom and joy.
“Then I try different ways of telling the story musically, highlighting the lyrics in the way I sing the song,” she goes on. “If you listen to ‘As Time Goes By,’ there are 80 versions on iTunes, all exactly the same tempo. It’s certainly
comfort food, and I was afraid my audience would wonder ‘why is she doing it this way,’ but they love it.”
As a child, Callaway was exposed to both the music and the concept of investigating a subject from every angle. Her father was Chicago’s legendary TV and radio journalist John Callaway. Her mother, Shirley Callaway, was a talented singer, pianist and one of New York’s most in-demand vocal coaches.
“But you have to find a way to be yourself,” Callaway asserts.
For a Renaissance woman, that requires a career polished into many unique facets. Although she is a mainstay in concert halls — playing with, among others, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood — Callaway is also known for her Tony-nominated performance in the Broadway musical “Swing!” and for writing and singing the theme song to the TV series “The Nanny.” She’s done movies, too, including “The Good Shepherd” with Angelina Jolie and Matt Damon, was featured in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade singing “Yes, Virginia” and was recently named Broadwayworld.com’s “Performer of the Year.”
“Great is one of the most over-used words in the dictionary,” Musical Theatre Review wrote, “but just as Ella Fitzgerald was the greatest jazz singer of her era, so too is the magnificent Ann Hampton Callaway of hers.”