Claire Booth & Jams Coleman - Life Stories (CD)

Life Stories brings together soprano Claire Booth and pianist Jâms Coleman in a vibrant program exploring the borderland between classical song and cabaret. At it's center is Zoë Martlew's Hotel Babylon, a contemporary cycle written for Booth: seven sharply drawn character studies that trace a playful yet unsettling journey through temptation, vice and redemption. Blending cabaret, expressionism, tango and baroque echoes, Martlew's music creates a modern counterpart to Schoenberg's Brettl-Lieder, reimagined for the 21st century. Surrounding this new work is a constellation of composers who also navigate the everyday and the existential through song. Gershwin's The Man I Love and I Got Rhythm offer melodic clarity and bittersweet simplicity; Eisler's Hollywooder Liederbuch excerpts deliver intimate, politically charged reflections from the composer's American exile; and Poulenc's Banalités reveals profound emotion beneath it's surface wit and elegance. Earl Wild's piano transcriptions of Gershwin bring Romantic virtuosity into dialogue with the album's lyrical core. The program concludes with Thomas Adès' Life Story, a candid, fragmented setting of Tennessee Williams that mirrors the fragile human connections running through the disc. Together, these works form a compelling portrait of storytelling in song-by turns ironic, tender, biting, and deeply humane.

Track List:

Disc: 1

1. Martlew: Hotel Babylon - Madame
2. Martlew: Hotel Babylon - Baby
3. Martlew: Hotel Babylon - Chef
4. Martlew: Hotel Babylon - Beautician
5. Martlew: Hotel Babylon - Hierophant
6. Martlew: Hotel Babylon - Cashier
7. Martlew: Hotel Babylon - Lover
8. Gershwin: The Man I Love
9. Gershwin: I Got Rhythm
10. Eisler: Hollywooder Liederbuch - An Den Kleinen Radioapparat
11. Eisler: Hollywooder Liederbuch - Über Den Selbstmord
12. Eisler: Hollywooder Liederbuch - L'automne Californien (Kalifornischer Herbst)
13. Eisler: Hollywooder Liederbuch - Der Kirschdieb
14. Poulenc: Banalités, FP 107 - Chanson D'orkenise
15. Poulenc: Banalités, FP 107 - Hôtel
16. Poulenc: Banalités, FP 107 - Fagnes de Wallonie
17. Poulenc: Banalités, FP 107 - Voyage À Paris
18. Poulenc: Banalités, FP 107 - Sanglots
19. Gershwin: Somebody Loves Me
20. Gershwin: Embraceable You
21. Adès: Life Story, Op. 8B