Laura Nyro was one of pop music's true originals: A brilliant and innovative composer, her songs found greater commercial success in the hands of other performers, but her own records -- intricate, haunting works highlighting her singularly powerful vocal phrasing, evocative lyrics, and alchemical fusion of gospel, soul, folk, and jazz structures -- remain her definitive artistic legacy.
The daughter of a jazz trumpeter, she was born Laura Nigro on October 18, 1947, and composed her first songs at the age of eight. After attending Manhattan's famed High School of Music and Art, she began performing in area clubs, drawing on influences as diverse as and .
In 1966, Nyro issued her first LP, More Than a New Discovery; though commercially unsuccessful, the album was a treasure trove of material for other artists -- the Fifth Dimension scored with "Wedding Bell Blues" and "Blowin' Away,"
In 1967, Nyro made just her second major live appearance to date at the Monterey Pop Festival; her idiosyncratic performance baffled the crowd, and she was booed off the stage. Then-music agent caught her set, however, and was so impressed that he quit his current position to become her manager.
He also won Nyro a contract with Columbia, and in 1968 she returned with the extraordinary Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. While the album earned vast critical acclaim, she again found commercial success not with her own recordings, but with covers of 's songs, as the Fifth Dimension reached the charts with renditions of "Stoned Soul Picnic" and "Sweet Blindness," while "Eli's Comin'" became a major hit for .
, released in 1969, fared better thanks to the strong word of mouth now trailing her work; the record's "Time and Love" and "Save the Country" soon emerged as two of her most well-regarded and popular songs.
With 1970's Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, she continued her exploration of soul music, enlisting Muscle Shoals' staples like , , and ; "Beads of Sweat" also featured guitar work from . Gonna Take a Miracle, recorded with and the production team of Gamble Huff, marked a dramatic left turn in 1971; Nyro's lone album of non-original material, it featured her tributes to Motown ("Jimmy Mack," "Nowhere to Run"), doo wop ("The Bells," "Spanish Harlem"), and the girl group era ("I Met Him on a Sunday").
At the age of 24, Nyro announced her retirement; she married, severed her industry connections, and moved to a small community in New England.
However, the marriage ended in divorce, and in 1975 she resurfaced with ; a subsequent tour yielded the 1977 live set Season of Lights. However, the long layoff derailed whatever chart momentum her music had accrued, and after the dismal sales of 1978's , she again retreated from the music business.
When Nyro finally returned from her self-imposed exile in 1984 with , her music had grown more reserved and introspective; as the title indicated, her own motherhood provided considerable inspiration for her new work, as did her rustic New England lifestyle.
While she did not make any overt declarations of retirement, Nyro waited another five years before issuing her next LP, Live at the Bottom Line, recorded at the legendary New York club; Walk the Dog and Light the Light, her first collection of new material in nearly a decade, followed in 1993. Four years later, Nyro died of ovarian cancer, on April 8, 1997. A posthumous collection of unreleased early work, , was issued in 2001, and several additional live recordings also surfaced.
~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide emerge in the 1960s.
others. Nyro’s style was a distinctive hybrid of -style New York pop, mixed with elements of jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, and rock.
Her lyrics were abstract and sophisticated, first as a reflection of concentrating on animal-rights issues, motherhood and a growing concern for the human condition. She possessed a voice which could register tenderness, rage and playfulness with equal ability and had an instinctive sense of song arrangement and vocal arrangement skills. This revealed itself not only in her own material but also in her recordings of, as she called them, “the teenage heartbeat songs of my youth” and the occasional pop standard.
These songs were interpreted by Nyro with her distinctive Born in the , of and parents, Nyro was best known by the general public – and had the most commercial success – as a composer and lyricist, rather than as a performer. Her "Eli's Coming" (a hit for ). Ironically, Nyro's own best-selling single The Roof.
"
was initiated, which allowed Nyro more freedom and control. Her first Columbia effort, Eli And The Thirteenth Confession in , was released to wild critical praise for the depth and sophistication of the performance and arrangements. The album’s merger of pop structure with inspired imagery, rich, multi-tracked Nyro vocals and an avant-garde set of jazz flavorings, remains one of the most important breakthrough works of the era.
Follow-up albums, ( ), and Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat ( ) cemented Nyro’s credibility as an important artist and sparked a following of devoted fans, especially among fellow musicians who were often seen in the audience and backstage at her performances.
vocal harmonies.
Nyro was reportedly uncomfortable with attempts to mass-market her as a celebrity and, frustrated with a record industry becoming increasingly driven by commerce, Nyro announced her retirement from the music business at the age of 24.
Five years later in , however, she returned with an album of new material called " ". Nyro’s re-emergence work revealed a more mature artist of less intensity, but of deeper, more subtle and complex shadings. By this time, the experience of a failed marriage and motherhood – and an eventual, personal relationship with a female partner – provided additional life experiences which impacted her personally, and is reflected in her work.
While this and many of her later releases lack much of the commercial accessibility of her earlier work, they maintain her high standard as a writer and arranger, and her undiminished ability as a superb vocalist.
, a recent, live recording which marked the beginning of a renewed series of live appearances. On this recording, Nyro sounds fresh and revitalized, performing a variety of old and new material with an excellent set of musicians.
Her next release was Walk The Dog And Light The Light ( ), her first studio album in years, and her last for Columbia, co-produced by Gary Katz of production fame. A solid piece of work, it sparked further reappraisal of her place in popular music, and new commercial offers began to appear.
Always protective of her integrity, she reportedly turned down some lucrative film-composing offers, although she did Americans.
Also according to sources, both and during this period, yet she turned them down as well, citing her discomfort with appearing on television (she only made a handful ). She never released an official video, although there was talk of filming some appearances in the 1990s.
Nyro died of in on April 8 at the age of 49.
This was the same disease that claimed the life of her mother, Gilda Mirsky Nigro, who also was 49 at the time of her death.
Her life partner was Maria Desiderio (d. 1999.
) She is survived by her son Gil Bianchini, her father Louis Nigro, and her brother Jan Nigro.
After diagnosis, in the months before her death, her old label Columbia Records – now owned by Sony – was planning a double-disc CD retrospective of material from her years at the label. The company involved Nyro herself, who selected the tracks and approved the final project.
She lived to see the release ( ), and was reportedly pleased with the outcome.
and 1994.
A biography of Nyro, Soul Picnic: The Music And Passion Of Laura Nyro, written by Michele Kort, was published in 2002 by Thomas Dunne Books/St.
Martin's Press.
Laura Nyro's music was the subject of an in-depth 2003 study by music theorist Ari Lauren at the . By analyzing the rhythmic and chordal progressions of Nyro's early work, Ms.
Lauren elucidated the similarities between Nyro's songs and the compositions of the era, arguing that Laura Nyro deserves a place within the pantheon of the , alongside such composers as , , and .
Nyro's life and music were celebrated in a BBC Radio 2 documentary, Shooting Star – David Geffen, co-producers Arif Mardin and Gary Katz, and performers and .
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