Something Irresistible: Shepley Metcalf Sings Fran Landesman at Metropolitan Room

A treasure trove of new songs by the proto-talented American expatriate lyricist Fran Landesman, have been smuggled into the U.S. by the singer Shepley Metcalf. The songs, gems from the still prolific but mercurial tunesmith who withdrew to London in the mid-60’s, are being performed for the first time ever on these shores.

Jazzwise, the UK’s noted jazz magazine, gave Metcalf's album of these new songs four stars, calling it a “fine, exquisitely programmed 15-song collection.”

Written with the jazz composer Simon Wallace, Landesman’s songwriting collaborator in London since 1994, the new collection is hailed by The Boston Herald as “a trove of should-be standards.” Among the standouts are “In a New York Minute,” “It’s Cool to be Cool,” “When Your Computer Crashes,” and the monumentally poignant “Save the Photographs.”...

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A treasure trove of new songs by the proto-talented American expatriate lyricist Fran Landesman, have been smuggled into the U.S. by the singer Shepley Metcalf. The songs, gems from the still prolific but mercurial tunesmith who withdrew to London in the mid-60’s, are being performed for the first time ever on these shores.

Jazzwise, the UK’s noted jazz magazine, gave Metcalf's album of these new songs four stars, calling it a “fine, exquisitely programmed 15-song collection.”

Written with the jazz composer Simon Wallace, Landesman’s songwriting collaborator in London since 1994, the new collection is hailed by The Boston Herald as “a trove of should-be standards.” Among the standouts are “In a New York Minute,” “It’s Cool to be Cool,” “When Your Computer Crashes,” and the monumentally poignant “Save the Photographs.”

After contacting Wallace in London and expressing her vivid interest in any new Landesman tunes, Metcalf met Wallace for the first time at the Café Carlyle in March ‘09. At this meeting, she was handed the mother lode of songs (which Wallace was preparing to publish as the first Landesman/Wallace songbook).

A Greenwich Village fixture in her early career, Landesman is best known for her widely admired standards “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” and “The Ballad of the Sad Young Men.” Her songs have been covered in classic recordings by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Ricki Lee Jones, Gil Evans and Bette Midler. Wallace is well known in Great Britain for his extensive work as a jazz pianist, arranger and composer in nightclubs, for the theatre and television.

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