6.5.08

Saturday, May 24 at 8 p.m.










Saturday, May 24 at 8 p.m.Laurel Massé, jazz vocalist(Tex Arnold, piano, Tom Hubbard, bass)


The program will include songs by Richard Whiting and Johnny Mercer, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, Dave Brubeck, Jerome Kern and Yip Harburg, Chris Thile, and Tex Arnold

“Duke Ellington said there’s two kinds of music: good music and bad music. And I think there’s two kinds of spiritual music: overt and covert,” observes Laurel Masse. Her own tastes are eclectic. The Manhattan Transfer, the group Masse co-founded, combined big band, doo wop, pop, and bebop influences. (Their secret model was the Kingston Trio.) But whatever she sings, there is one common element. “I am so heavily steeped in swing, that whether I’m singing a Basie chart or Mozart, it’s going to swing!” she remarks. Masse will appear with pianist Tex Arnold and bassist Tom Hubbard at the Chamber Arts Festival of Marbletown on May 24. She recently lived in Highland, New York for five years, so the concert is a homecoming of sorts for her.