York and Lawrence’s music theater project about climate change, Water, Water Everywhere (tracks 2-3), was featured in a workshop production at the BRIC Performing Arts Center in Brooklyn. The show blended musings on the climate with a memoir of Nora’s childhood summers in Canada. Nora interviewed many climate scientists to inspire the text and introduced the idea of combining original songs with Handel’s Water Music. The piece’s pensive title song is followed by the chamber music-inspired “Tiny Blue Creature,” which shimmers with the imagery of nature.

Jamie says: “There is nothing particularly ‘watery’ about Handel’s music except for the fact that its first performance took place on a barge traveling up the Thames River in London! It was just this kind of inside joke that Nora loved and helped inspire many of the musical moments that happen when we transition from an original ballad, into an excerpt of Handel, and then back to the ballad. Although climate change was on everyone’s mind when we wrote these songs, mostly in 2012, they have only become more prescient with time.”

RAIN also boasts six selections from the show Jump (tracks 4-9), a theatrical adaptation of Tosca with a potent mix of pop, folk and classical music that premiered at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival. It features a book by six-time Obie Award winner David Greenspan, and was directed by six-time Obie Award winner, and former artistic director of The Public, JoAnne Akalaitis. Greenspan returned to Victorien Sardou’s original 1887 French play, La Tosca, and integrated it with the biographical story of Sarah Bernhardt. Sardou wrote the play for Berhardt who spent a lifetime performing this part (only when the Puccini opera became a hit, did the original material fade from memory.)

These tracks feature guest vocalists bass-baritone Kevin Burdette and tenor Andrew Drost. Highlights include the melodic lilt of “Love and Beauty,” the light rhythmic bounce of “Love Only Me,” the ravishing harmonies of “Waiting,” and the plaintive drama of the finale “Vissi Darte.” Lawrence comments: “Nora was a profoundly political person who often brought her politics into her performances and her songwriting. The Tosca story of an artist fighting the politicians of her time deeply resonated with Nora.”

RAIN is bookended by two standalone songs. “Home Is Where the Heart Is” is a beautiful Nora original that never made it onto her 2006 album, What I Want. The closing is a heartfelt, stark-as-nails performance of Purcell’s “When I Am Laid in Earth.” It is a haunting interpretation of this classic reinvented by Nora’s unique burnished voice and her bother Andrew’s 18th century bassoon.

Jerry Kearns, Nora’s husband and collaborator, concludes: “In her person and her music, Nora discovered and revealed insights into layers of buried rhythms unifying the dissonance of daily perception. She harmonized apparent difference and contradiction into sources of unity and strength. Hierarchies and boundaries stimulated her egalitarian search for connection across musical and social boundaries. For those who hear her captivating voice, Nora’s music reveals our unified soul underpinning surface difference.”

JAMIE LAWRENCE is an eclectic musician active in film, television, and theater as a composer, orchestrator, and producer. He has racked up five Emmy awards and another nine Emmy nominations for his compositions and arrangements. He served as Music Director for the 2019 Tony Awards and has been its principal composer/arranger for many years. Jamie has scored many documentaries for HBO, including Dealing Dogs, Death on a Factory Farm, The Alzheimer’s Project - “Momentum in Science,” and produced and orchestrated the scores for many Rebecca Miller’s films, most recently Arthur Miller: Writer, Maggie’s Plan, and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. He scored and contributed songs to Hulu’s teen musical romp Best Summer Ever. As an orchestrator and arranger, he has penned arrangements for numerous musical luminaries such as Jessye Norman, Quincy Jones, Smokey Robinson, Audra McDonald, and Herbie Hancock. He is currently orchestrating and just co-produced the cast album to Days of Wine and Roses, the upcoming Broadway musical by Adam Guettel.

Jamie loves writing songs and in the past few years has co-written and produced albums for MuMu (Ladies First), Nora York (Swoon), as well as released his personal jazz foray, New York Suite. Jamie grew up in New York City and received a BA in music from Yale University. In his off hours, he has a sideline as a writer/performer of children’s songs under his alias, Jamie Broza. His first CD for children, Bad Mood Mom and other Good Mood Songs, made the Parents’ Choice Foundation’s list of the top 25 children’s CDs in the last 25 years. He is an adjunct professor of Film Scoring at the NYU Film Scoring masters program.

1. Home Is Where the Heart Is*

2. Water, Water Everywhere

3. Tiny Blue Creature

4. Jump

5. Love and Beauty

6. Love Only Me

7. Waiting

8. Time Ran Out

9. Vissi Darte

10. When I Am Laid in Earth+