The music of the movies holds a special place in our hearts. As the story lines fade from our memories, it is the timeless music of the movies that we continue to hear and recall with a wisp of nostalgia from the first time we heard our favorite tune.
Jazz singers Tierney Sutton and Ann Hampton Callaway have recently delved into the expansive music library of the silver screen: Callaway, with Jazz Goes to the Movies; and Sutton, with her release of ScreenPlay.The classic movie songs on both albums have been beautifully reimagined, allowing you to feel as though you’re hearing your favorite melodies for the very first time.
In October, Sutton and Callaway will be at Irvine Barclay Theatre. Together, on one stage, they’ll pay homage to the music of the movies with the iconic songs of Gershwin, Sondheim, Porter and Mancini.
Music storytellers at heart, both Sutton and Callaway have had firsthand experience with writing and performing music of the movies.
In 2016, Sutton, an eight-time Grammy nominee, was asked by Clint Eastwood to collaborate on the music for his film, Sully. Her touching rendition of “Flying Home” (for which she co-wrote the lyrics), graces the end credits.
Callaway made her film debut singing “Come Rain or Come Shine” in Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd.” She wrote and recorded the love song, “Pourquoi,” for the movie Blind and can be heard singing “The Nearness of You” on thesoundtrack of the Last Holiday, starring Queen Latifah. (As an amusing side note, she is perhaps best known for writing and singing the theme song to the 1990s T.V. hitThe Nanny, jokingly calling the 42-second tune “my accountant’s favorite song.”)
If “music is a bridge from heaven to earth,” as Callaway often tells her audience, then the marriage of music and movies is…simply divine!