By Zach Dunkin
A champion of the Great American Songbook, singer-songwriter Ann Hampton Callaway considers Barbra Streisand a friend. Yet, it’s not as if she can call her on the phone, and say, “Hey, Babs, I’ve got another song for you.”
“I’ve had many wonderful conversations with Barbra over the
years,” Callaway said. “But no matter how wonderful our times have been, I still feel in a state of awe over her. Your heart always beats faster when you’re in the same room with her. It’s like finding out that Santa Claus is a real person.”
Callaway and conductor Charles Prince and Carmel Symphony will deliver a family-oriented holiday package of pop, jazz and classical holiday tunes at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Dec. 10 at The Palladium.
Callaway’s music and lyrics have been performed and recorded by Liza Minnelli, Carole King, Michael Feinstein and Pattie LuPone, to name a few, but one of her favorite projects was writing the lyrics to “I’ve Dreamed of You” for Streisand, who sang the song to James Brolin on their wedding day.
“Barbara had fallen in love with the melody by Rolf Lovland, a great composer from Norway, so she asked me to write the lyrics,” Callaway said of the wedding song. “What I didn’t know was that she was getting married three days later. I wrote the song just in the nick of the time. She got it three hours before she was getting married.’’
Callaway also wrote “A Christmas Lullaby” for Streisand’s “Christmas Memories” before recording her own Christmas album, last year’s “The Hope of Christmas” with holiday lyrics written by two-time Emmy Award winner William Schermerhorn.
Her holiday concert will include her own “God Bless My Family,” Ella Fitzgerald’s “Blues in the Night,” a song recorded by Streisand, “At The Same Time,” and a couple classics mirroring Streisand’s interpretation.
“I happen to be a very sentimental person when it comes to the holidays, so it was a wonderful adventure.”
For more, visit thecenterfortheperformingarts.org.
