Melody Gardot's Worrisome Heart.
Gardot was one of the performers on BBC4's Great American Songbook,(catch this while you can) and C & I both thought she was rather marvellous. There is some of her on YouTube but not enough. When she sings of the Worrisome Heart she know what she is talking about. From Wiki:
While cycling in Philadelphia in November 2003 she was hit by a Jeep Cherokee whose driver had ignored a red traffic light.
In the accident she suffered serious head and spinal injuries and her pelvis was shattered in two places. Because of these severe injuries she was confined to her hospital bed for a year and had to remain lying on her back. As a further consequence of her injuries she had to re-learn simple tasks such as brushing her teeth and walking. The most noticeable effect of the neural injuries she suffered is that she was left hyper-sensitive to both light and sound, therefore requiring her to wear dark sunglasses at nearly all times to shield her eyes. The accident also resulted in both long and short term memory problems and difficulty with her sense of time. Gardot has described coping with this as like "climbing Mount Everest every day" as she often wakes with no memory of what she has to do that day...
...Gardot started music lessons at the age of nine and began playing piano in Philadelphia bars at the age of sixteen on Fridays and Saturdays for four hours a night. She insisted on only playing music she liked, ranging from standards from The Mamas & the Papas to Duke Ellington and modern groups such as Radiohead.
During her time in hospital she learned how to play the guitar and began writing songs, which were made available as downloads in iTunes and released in Some Lessons: The Bedroom Sessions in 2005. She began to play these songs at venues in Philadelphia and was spotted by the radio station WXPN, operated by the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, which helped to launch Norah Jones. As well as playing her songs, WXPN encouraged her to assemble a demo, which was quickly picked up by Universal Records.
Released in 2006 and then re-released by Verve Records in 2008, her first full-length album was entitled Worrisome Heart. After meeting her in New York City in 2008, producer Larry Klein began working with Gardot and they released her second album, My One and Only Thrill, on April 28, 2009. Also in 2009, Gardot released a live EP, Live from SoHo.
Her take on Somewhere Over the Rainbow was gorgeous, but so was her Get Out of Town, and Someday My Prince Will Come. The YouTube version of Rainbow.. suffers from bad sound quality.
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Meanwhile the far right in Hungary is expected to make large gains in the first leg of the general election today. Frankly, it makes me want to weep. More worrisome heart.
1 comment:
I saw Melody Gardot recently as a "warm up" act, along with Madeleine Peyroux, for a Diana Krall concert. She wore large sunglasses on stage which I remember thinking seemed a rather affected mannerism. Now I know why, and feel that awful rush to judgement was unkind to say the least. A timely reminder that judgement is best made with as many facts as you can muster.
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