24 years and still going strong, Lani Hall returns for Seasons of Love
Photo credit: Dewey Nicks
Lani Hall recently announced her new album, Seasons of Love out April 22nd via Herb Alpert Presents. The album marks the artist's first studio release in over 20 years and features her long time partner Herb Alpert both on trumpet and acting as co-producer. Today she has also released the single “Here Comes The Sun,” her take on the George Harrison penned Beatles classic. “‘Here Comes The Sun’, written by George Harrison, carries hope for a brighter future in these disturbing times,” says Hall. LISTEN HERE.Fans can pre-order Seasons of Love today.
Tour Dates
*On tour with Herb Alpert
June 2 - Humphrey's By The Bay - San Diego, CA
June 3 - Musical Instrument Museum - Phoenix, AZ
June 4 - Musical Instrument Museum - Phoenix, AZ
June 5 - Tucson Jazz Festival - Rialto Theatre - Tucson, AZ
June 7 - Tobin Center for the Performing Arts - San Antonio, TX
June 8 - The Paramount Theater - Austin, TX
June 10 - Cypress Creek FACE - Spring (Houston), TX
July 23 - Savannah, GA - To Be Announced
July 24 - Charleston Music Hall - Charleston, SC
July 26 - The Birchmere - Alexandria, VA
July 27 - Maryland Hall - Annapolis, MD
July 29 - Count Basie Theater - Red Bank, NJ
July 30 - The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center - Old Saybrook, CT
July 31 - The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center - Old Saybrook, CT
Aug 11-14 - SF JAZZ - San Francisco, CA
Sept 14 - Kansas - To Be Announced
Sept 15 - Fayetteville, AR - To Be Announced
Sept 16- Germantown, TN - To Be Announced
Sept 18 - City Winery - Nashville, TN
Sept 19 - Memorial Hall - Cincinnati, Ohio
Sept 20 - Royal Oak Music Theater - Royal Oak, Michigan
Sept 22 - Indiana - To Be Announced
Sept 23 - Evanston, IL - To Be Announced
Dec 1 - West Palm Beach, FL - To Be Announced
Dec 2 - Ft Lauderdale, FL - To Be Announced
Dec 3 - Clearwater, FL - To Be Announced
Dec 5 - Atlanta, GA - To Be Announced
Dec 6 - Knoxville, TN - To Be Announced
Dec 7 - Durham, NC - To Be Announced
Dec 15 - Las Vegas, NV - To Be Announced
Dec 16 - Las Vegas, NV - To Be Announced
Dec 17 - Santa Monica, CA - To Be Announced
2023
March 9 - Palm Desert, CA - To Be Announced
March 10 - Phoenix, AZ - To Be Announced
March 1 - Prescott, AZ - To Be Announced
March 12 - Cerritos Center For The Performing Arts - Cerritos, CA
April 4 - Port Theater - Nanaimo, BC
April 5 - Tidemark Theater - Campbell River, BC
April 7 - MacPherson Playhouse - Victoria, BC
April 8 - Chan Centre for the Performing Arts - Vancouver, BC
April 10 - Myer Horowitz Theatre - Edmonton, AB
April 1 - Bella Concert Hall - Calgary, AB
May 29 - June 4 - Ronnie Scott's - London, UK
Lani Hall has had a long and storied career that began singing in clubs in her native Chicago, where she was discovered by Sergio Mendes and invited to become the lead singer for Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66 at the tender age of 19 - a position she kept until 1971. Lani Hall has won 2 GRAMMY Awards, recorded more than 22 albums and is among an illustrious list of artists (Adele, Billie Eilish, Shirley Bassey) that have contributed James Bond Theme Songs - Hall performed the 1983 theme for Never Say Never Again.
At its core Seasons of Love is about her enduring partnership with legendary musician, visual artist and A&M Founder, Herb Alpert. Beyond their emotional bond, their creative partnership is remarkable and on full display on the album. Alpert and Hall have continued to tour relentlessly in recent years - despite not releasing a full-length album in two decades, she has been a fixture on stages and in theaters around the world. When 2020’s halt arrived, canceling all 55 tour dates they had planned for that year, Alpert hit the studio and surprised Lani with a fully tracked version of one of her favorite songs, “Seasons of Love” - all it needed was her soulful alto layered on top. This spark turned into an album full of Lani Hall’s favorites- some sung in Spanish and Portuguese (“No Te Vayas No” and “Sorri”), some she’s recorded before and reimagined here (“Happy Woman”) and (“Waters of March”) all reflections on love imbued with a depth that has long been the signature of Hall’s gorgeous and evocative voice.
Seasons of Love will be available on April 22nd, digitally and on CD.
More About - Lani Hall - Seasons Of Love
With Seasons of Love (Herb Alpert Presents), Lani Hall comes full circle. The new album bridges two discrete phases in the career of this timeless artist. The first, stretching from 1972 to 1998, encompasses Lani’s solo years, during which she released a dozen albums. The second comprises her varied endeavors during the 21st century, which have included co-producing and singing on three LPs with her husband, legendary trumpeter Herb Alpert, culminating with 2013’s Grammy-winning Steppin’ Out; the re-energized couple also spent 14 of those years on extensive North American and international tours.
Emotionally and thematically, Seasons of Love reflects the depth and breadth of Lani and Herb’s 49 years as marriage partners and artistic collaborators. On the LP, Lani brings her rich life experience, deepened perspective and accrued wisdom to a song cycle that explores the nuances of an enduring relationship—one that has continued to flourish as the years have flown by. This poignantly uplifting theme is seductively apparent in the carefully chosen songs and Lani’s inspired performances.
The seeds of the album were sown by circumstance. Herb and Lani had booked 55 concerts for 2020 but were forced to put those plans on hold when the pandemic hit. Confined to their home during the lockdown, they looked for other ways to channel their creative energies, and while filling his days with painting and playing the trumpet, Herb came up with an idea for their next collaboration, keeping it to himself until it was gift-wrapped and ready to present to Lani.
“He called me into his studio one day and said, ‘Hey, listen to this,’” she recalls. “He’d made a track with musician Bill Cantos in my key—it was all done except for the vocal. He asked Bill to sing the guide vocal just so that everybody would know where the ‘one’ was. I sat there listening to the track, and I said, ‘Oh, I love this song!’ And he said, ‘I know you love this song. I want you to sing it.’ And that was so touching to me. It was like a Valentine—the most beautiful, sensitive gift that anyone could ever give to me. And there it was.”
The song Herb had recorded for Lani to sing—which would become the launching pad for the album project—was the modern-day standard “Seasons of Love,” the centerpiece of Jonathan Larson’s 1996 musical, Rent. “It’s such an amazing song,” Lani says. “Every time it would come on, wherever we were, I would tell him how much I loved it. And he’d logged it in his head.”
Inspired by Herb’s musical Valentine, Lani began leafing through her back pages in search of other songs that held special meaning for her.
“I picked songs that I’ve always loved, like ‘Happy Woman,’ ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ Bill Withers’ ‘Lovely Day,’ Jobim’s ‘Waters of March’ and Wynonna Judd’s ‘You Are,’” she explains. “I wanted the album to be about how powerful love is. And that was what led me to choose these beautiful songs.”
For one key selection, Lani reached all the way back to her formative years in her hometown of Chicago.
“‘Now You Know’ by Bobby Troup was a song that I grew up with,” Lani notes. “When I was about 14. I got this jazz album by Ruth Olay [the 1959 LP Easy Living]. ‘Now You Know’ was on it, and I fell in love with it. I’d never heard anyone else record it, and I always felt that if I ever did an album of jazz ballads, I was going to do that song. So it just stayed in my head, and when we started this album, ‘Now You Know’ was one of the first songs I wanted to do.”
They laid down the tracks in Herb’s studio, with Lani co-producing the other musicians playing their parts remotely, though the resulting tracks sound convincingly like a band playing live in a room. Among the players making key contributions to the album were two members of their touring group, keyboard player and arranger Cantos and bassist Hussain Jiffry, as well as guitarist Mitchell Long, bass player Andre de Santanna and percussionist Rafael Padilla, with Eduardo del Barrio providing 2 orchestrations and mixed by Jochem van der Saag.
“Originally we were going to do it as a EP, but we just kept going until it turned into an album. And I have a really great producer!” Lani says with a laugh.
Herb plays on six of the 10 tracks, his eloquent, empathetic soloing mirroring and underscoring the emotions Lani is expressing in her vocal interpretations. “He’s so wonderful—he plays beautifully on every song,” Herb’s biggest fan raves. “He’s constantly growing as a musician, and he’s so inspiring.”
Lani revisits several songs she’d previously recorded, including “Happy Woman” from her second solo album, 1975’s Hello, It’s Me, written by Chicago singer/keyboardist Peter Cetera; Bruce Roberts and Allee Willis’ “I Don’t Want You to Go,” which originally appeared on Lani’s Willis-co-produced 1980 LP Blush; and a pair from her most recent LP, 1998’s Brazil Nativo—Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Waters of March.”
“I’d always liked ‘Waters of March,’” Lani says. “When I first heard the song, it seemed very cute, with lyrics like ‘A stick, a stone. It’s the end of the road’—but I didn’t know what it was really about. Then one day, when I was going through my albums, I pulled out an Antonio Carlos Jobim album [1973’s Jobim, on which he performs the song in both English and Portuguese, as “Águas de Março”] and on the back of were the lyrics to ‘Waters of March.’ I read it like I was reading a book, and I couldn’t believe that that was the song—it’s so moving and profound. And as I was sitting there reading it, I said to myself, ‘If I ever record this song, I’m recording it slow.’ That’s the way I hear it.”
Floating amid cumulus clouds of silky strings orchestrated by Eduardo del Barrio, Lani’s burnished alto brings Jobim’s poetic language to vivid life in a caressing, gently ecstatic rendition so heartfelt that the term “performance” doesn’t do it justice.
“I wanted to sing ‘Happy Woman’—it was originally called ‘Happy Man’—again in a different tempo, with a different feel,” Lani continues. “And then, when we got to ‘I Don’t Want You to Go,’ Herb said, ‘You know, I’d like to hear that one in Spanish.’ I said, ‘Really? Well, how do we do that?’ And he got it together; he had Luis Angel Marquez, who’s a Latin artist and a composer, translate the English lyric to Spanish.” So on Seasons of Love, “I Don’t Want You to Go” becomes “No te Vayas No,” orchestrated by Bill Cantos.
Lani has been singing in Portuguese since 1966, when she became the voice of the wildly successful group Sérgio Mendez & Brasil ’66 at the age of 19 after the pianist/bandleader discovered her singing in a Chicago club. “I had to learn these Brazilian songs in Portuguese,” she recalls. “I would ask them to tell me what the songs meant, and they’d explain them to me, but at a certain point that approach lost its musicality for me—it just became about the words—so I decided not to dwell too much on the literal meanings of the lyrics. I felt the rhythms and the melodies so strongly that I began to sing the songs the way I felt them, and I knew what I was expressing. Most of them were love songs as well. I still gravitate to that theme, obviously.”
So it wasn’t a stretch when Herb suggested to Lani that she once again sing “Smile” in Portuguese; the title translates to ‘Sorri.’ “The Portuguese language is so musical,” Lani says. “Sometimes when I sing in Portuguese, I feel like I’m a percussionist.”
Seasons of Love climaxes evocatively with “Sorri (Smile)” and “Here Comes the Sun,” two songs that spur special memories for the couple. The A&M Records campus in Hollywood was originally Charlie Chaplin Studios, and George Harrison met his future wife, label staffer Olivia Arias, on the lot soon after he’d brought his Dark Horse Records to A&M, marking the beginning of another touching love story. What’s more, the two songs’ messages of hope and resilience take on added significance during uncertain times like these.
“All the songs seem relevant to the times, especially ‘Smile’ and ‘Here Comes the Sun,’” Lani points out. “But they’re also about how important love is in the increments of a life. It’s a love album, absolutely. I’ve always wanted to do an album like this.”
Once they’d finished Seasons of Love, Herb began work on a new album of his own. “He’s recording right now, and I’m helping him with arrangements and production,” says Lani, beaming. “That’s always fun for me, because we’re doing it together.”
Both literally and figuratively a labor of love, this captivating album puts an elegant exclamation point on an extraordinary partnership punctuated by the precious moments Lani and Herb have shared throughout their ever-inspiring love affair—which remains as vital as ever as the couple near their golden anniversary. We should all be so lucky.
