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Judy Collins performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday in Castle Theater at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. Tickets are $35, $45, $55, and $65 and are available at the box office, by calling 242-7469 or online at www.mauiarts.org.It‘s not uncommon for Judy Collins to be in a store or a coffee shop and hear Crosby, Stills & Nash’s classic “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” which Stephen Stills composed for her. Decades since its release, Collins still feels touched when it’s played.
“It’s interesting to hear that song because it continues to be a hit,” says Collins, calling from her New York City home. “People get very excited when they go to a concert and he sings it. They will email me or Facebook me. I’m still friends with Stephen. I did a duet with him three albums ago on ‘Paradise.’ We sang an old Tom Paxton song, ‘The Last Thing on my Mind.’ “
Performing for more than five decades, Collins can still enchant audiences with her amazing voice that still sounds as ethereal and emotive as ever.
“After 50-plus years, the crystalline voice has lost none of its legendary clarity,” praised Telluride Inside. “Judy Collins still sings like an angel. Her vocal interpretations continue to inspire millions and her poetry remains timeless. Like a pearl, Collins seems to improve with age.”
“I was very fortunate to find a great teacher when I was about 26, and I worked with him for 32 years until he died,” Collins explains. “He told me if you do what I’m telling you, you’ll be able to sing until you fall over. I’ve been lucky because I’ve been able to stop smoking, and I don’t drink anymore, and I lead a pretty healthy life. Thank God I have good health.”
Collins’ singing sounds so pure on her latest studio album, “Bohemian,” one could easily imagine it was recorded in the 1960s. The album is kind of a tribute to ’60s California.
“I’m a contemporary bohemian,” she says laughing. “There are people on there like Joni (Mitchell) that I’m impressed with, so in a way it’s a tribute, but it’s also going forward because I have new songs on the album I’m very fond of.”
One of these, “Morocco,” is extraordinarily beautiful. “I love that song,” she continues. “I have a note in my song book that says I wrote it for Leonard Cohen, but I don’t know if that’s true.”
Raised in Denver, Colo., Collins began performing in local clubs around 1959.
“I started singing as a little girl, in choirs and performing on my father’s radio show,” she recalls. “But when I got a guitar, I didn’t think of myself as a singer. I was a storyteller. My dad would bring show scores home and he would sing the best songs on the radio. After I got my career going, I started recording with (Stephen) Sondheim in ’73. I finally had the courage to break that barrier because for a while, I didn’t do it because it wasn’t folk and didn’t have a guitar in it. Now I sing all kinds of material.”
Moving to New York in the early 1960s, she became a fixture in the city’s mushrooming folk scene, performing at famous Greenwich Village venues.
“It was like a dazzling dream, there were so many talented people and so much good music,” she says. “I got to hear these artists when they were first writing songs. It was an amazing time.”
Bob Dylan was one of her contemporaries, and by her third album in 1963, she began recording his songs, including a superb version of “Masters of War.”
“I met him in 1959 when I was working in Colorado,” she recalls. “He would come by and say, ‘I sat at your feet.’ He was looking for a job, he couldn’t get hired. When I came to New York in 1961, he was there singing Woody Guthrie badly. Then all of a sudden, he started writing his own songs and I was hip to him right away. I went to his first concert, sitting with the president of Elektra Records, and he kept poking me, you have to sing that, you have to sing that, and I did. I was among the first to record him.”
It was another legendary composer, Cohen, who encouraged her to start writing her own material.
“We have a mutual admiration,” she notes. “I recorded his songs and got him known to get a record deal. (She had a hit with Cohen’s signature song “Suzanne” before he released it). He asked me why I wasn’t writing songs. So I started in 1967 and haven’t looked back. I always send him everything so he can hear them and he will send me back notes. He’s always very supportive. I even have a fan letter from Pete Seeger about a song of mine, the ‘Fallow Way,’ that’s the height for me.”
Collins’ major breakthrough came in 1967 with Mitchell’s song “Both Sides Now,” which earned her a Grammy.
“Joni sang it to me on the phone in 1967,” she says. “I got a call in the middle of the night from Al Kooper. He followed her home and when she sang it for him, he said, ‘You have to call Judy and sing it for her.’ She woke me up at 3 in the morning. So I always answer my telephone because it could be another ‘Both Sides Now.'”
While she has long been labeled a folk singer, Collins’ range is far wider. Her repertoire can range from Broadway standards to country, and on her 1993 album tribute to Dylan, “Just Like a Woman,” she rocks out on a version of “Gotta Serve Somebody.”
“I’m not a folk singer,” she emphasizes. “I love the material and being associated with the politics and the time and the social movement, but I sing all kinds of songs. I’m really a contemporary singer who chooses songs from every genre.”
So it was no problem for her to interpret the Beatles on her 2007 album, “Judy Collins Sings Lennon and McCartney.”
“I went to hear McCartney at Madison Square Garden about seven years ago and he sang those old songs,” she reports. “I thought I can’t wait to get my hands on them. I had a great time.”
After releasing tribute albums to the Beatles, Dylan and Cohen, has she thought about any other similar projects?
“I’ve always wanted to do a Jimmy Webb album,” she says. And I have plans to do some sleuthing in the Tom Waits’ discography. There are some tribute albums in the pipeline.”
At the age of 75, Collins still relishes touring and performing.
“I feel so blessed to be able to make a living as an artist these days because it’s a rare thing,” she says. “I get to spend time on the stage and be creative. I’m always on the creative edge, and that’s what I love about being an artist. I love what I do.”
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Acclaimed contemporary Hawaiian music duo HAPA will perform special dinner shows Sunday and Feb. 7 at the Maui Tropical Plantation’s Mill House. Pupus will be at 4 p.m., with dinner at 6 p.m. and the show at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $90. Call 270-0333 for more information.
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The Maui Pops Orchestra will celebrate the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein in an all-Broadway program at 3 p.m. Sunday in Castle Theater. The concert will include many of the most popular songs from “The King and I,” “South Pacific,” “Showboat” and “The Sound of Music.”
Under the direction of James Durham, the Maui Pops concert will feature guest artists Alli Mauzey and William Michals, who each have extensive Broadway credits.
Mauzey most recently starred as Glinda in the Broadway company of “Wicked.” Before that, she made her New York City Center Encores! debut in the role of Sydney in “It’s a Bird . . . It’s a Plane . . . It’s Superman.” Other Broadway credits include Lenora in the musical “Cry-Baby,” for which she won a Theatre World Award.
Recently appearing in the landmark revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” at the Lincoln Center, Michals made his Broadway debut as The Beast in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” and later returned to play Gaston in the same production. His career has continued in such roles as Javert in “Les Miserables,” Billy Flynn in “Chicago” and Don Quixote in “Man of La Mancha.”
The concert will also feature the Maui Pops Chorus under the direction of Cameron Keyes.
Tickets are $15, $30, $40 and $50, with half off seats in the $30 to $50 range for students 18 and younger. For reservations, visit the MACC box office, call 242-7469 or visit www.mauiarts.org.
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Hailed by The Boston Globe as “one of America’s most inventive string bands,” Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem explore the American musical tradition, performing everything from funky Delta blues to Appalachian ballads and spirituals.
“Daisy Mayhem continues to bring freshness and excitement to a genre that could easily succumb to terminal trendiness,” raved the San Francesco Guardian.
Their most recent CD, “Some Bright Morning,” mixes bright originals and traditional songs plus a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Reason to Believe.”
They play the McCoy Studio Theater at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $30 and are available at the box office, by calling 242-7469 or online at www.mauiarts.org.