Fran Landesman

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Fran Landesman (born October 21, 1927 in New York City as Frances Deitsch ; † July 23, 2011 in London ) was a songwriter , artist and poet from the United States and living in England .

Live and act

Frances father was a tailor, her mother a journalist. Her brother Sam Deitsch founded and ran the Washington Square Bar and Grill in San Francisco . She attended private schools, later Temple University and the Fashion Institute of Technology, initially to work in the fashion industry. In New York, she met the writer Jay Landesman , who published the short-lived magazine Neurotica , and married him on July 15, 1950. They have two sons, Cosmo and Miles Davis Landesman. She and her husband moved to St. Louis , Missouri , where he and his brother Fred opened the Crystal Palace nightclub. The company was successful, came up with big names and at the same time offered avant-garde theater productions.

In 1952 Fran Landesman began to write lyrics, inspired by her experiences in the bar of the Crystal Palace. Among her most famous one Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most , inspired by TS Eliot's poem April is the cruelest month ... composer was the pianist at the Crystal Palace, Tommy Wolf . The song soon became a hit with jazz singers like June Christy , Chris Connor , Ella Fitzgerald , Irene Kral and Betty Carter , and led to further work by Landesman and Wolf. He wrote the melodies for the songs of The Nervous Set , a musical based on a book by Jay Landesman that ran briefly on Broadway and contained Spring and The Ballad of the Sad Young Men . Another musical, Molly Darling by Jay Landesman and Martin Quigley, was produced for St. Louis MUNY Opera. Fran Landesman wrote the lyrics for A Walk on the Wild Side (1956) by Nelson Algren .

In 1960 she began working with singer, pianist and composer Bob Dorough , whom Wolf had brought to St. Louis to star in A Walk on the Wild Side . Their co-written song Nothing Like You was recorded by Dorough and Miles Davis , included on his 1967 album Sorcerer . Another song, Small Day Tomorrow , was the title of Dorough's 2007 album, which contains twelve songs with lyrics by Landesman.

In 1964, the Landesman couple moved to London , where they wrote song texts for artists such as Pat Smythe , Georgie Fame , Tom Springfield , Richard Rodney Bennett and Dudley Moore , as well as continuing their collaborations with composers in the United States. She wrote the lyrics for another musical by her husband, Dearest Dracula (1965) for the Dublin Theater Festival

In the 1970s, Fran Landesman also began writing and publishing poetry, which she presented at festivals and on BBC radio. In 1994 she met the British composer Simon Wallace , with whom she worked in her final years. The result was songs for various theater shows, such as There's Something Irresistible in Down (1996), which was produced for Young Vic by members of the Royal Shakespeare Company , Forbidden Games (1997) performed at the Ustinov Theater Bath, Pleasance Theater Edinburgh and Gdansk Shakespeare Festival, and Queen of the Bohemian Dream (2007), produced by the Source Theater in Washington, DC The Decline of the Middle West (1995) played at The Supper Club in Manhattan also contained texts by Landesman. In 1996, she caused protests at the BBC when she justified her cannabis use on the show Desert Island Discs .

In 1999, Landesman gave her archive to the University of Missouri – St. Louis , where it has since been in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection. In 2006 Circumstantial Productions released a new edition of her poems and lyrics, Small Day Tomorrow , edited by Richard Connolly .

For the last ten years of her life, she has performed regularly, recited her poetry, sang her songs, and occasionally spoke about her life and work. In 2003 she performed at Joe's Pub in New York with Jackie Cain and Bob Dorough; in October 2008 she returned to St. Louis for a solo show at the Gaslight Theater. Between 2010 and 2011 she made two-monthly guest appearances at RADA for Farrago Poetry ; every six months she gave concerts at the 606 Club in London. In May 2010 the South Bank Center presented the show A Night Out with Fran Landesman in the Purcell Room and in April 2011 the Leicester Square Theater presented An Evening with Fran Landesman as part of the Art of Song Festival . Her last appearance at RADA was on July 21, 2011, two days before her death at the age of 83.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary in The Telegraph
  2. ↑ Craig Sam's obituary in The Guardian , Feb. 25, 2011
  3. ↑ Lorraine Treanor, "Jay Landesman has made his final exit," DC Theater Scene (website), February 22, 2011
  4. ↑ Fran Landesman papers 1959–1998 ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , University of Missouri-St. Louis, accessed December 2, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.umsl.edu
  5. ^ Candid Records
  6. ^ Fran Landesman papers, 1959-1998, University of Missouri-St. Louis 1965 ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.umsl.edu
  7. ↑ William Grimes "Jay Landesman, Beat Writer and Editor, This at 91" , New York Times , February 28, 2011
  8. ↑ a b Fran Landesman papers, 1959–1998 ( Memento of the original of March 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , University of Missouri-St. Louis, accessed December 2, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.umsl.edu
  9. ↑ "Cannabis Campaign: Tune in for a desert Iceland spliff" , The Independent , May 24, 1998
  10. ^ "Desert Island Discs: Fran Landesman" , BBC website [September 1996]
  11. ^ Obituary: Fran Landesman, Daily Telegraph , July 26, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Landesman, Fran
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Deitsch, Frances (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American poet and songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 2011
Place of death London