Suzanne Vega

Suzanne Vega

Vega in performance, 2010
Background information
Born (1959-07-11) July 11, 1959
Santa Monica, California, United States
Origin New York City, United States
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Singer
  • songwriter
  • record producer
Instruments
  • Vocals
  • guitar
Years active 1982–present
Labels
Associated acts Shawn Colvin
Website suzannevega.com

Suzanne Nadine Vega (born July 11, 1959) is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer, best known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.[1][2]

Two of Vega's songs (both from her second album Solitude Standing, 1987) reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: Luka and Tom's Diner. The latter was originally an a cappella version on Vega's album, which was then remade in 1990 as a dance track produced by the British dance production team DNA.

Vega has released nine studio albums to date, the latest of which is Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers, released in 2016.

Early life

Vega was born July 11, 1959, in Santa Monica, California.[3] Her mother, Pat Vega (née Schumacher), is a computer systems analyst of German-Swedish heritage. Her father, Richard Peck, is of Scottish-English-Irish origin. They divorced soon after her birth.[4] Her stepfather, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, also known as Ed Vega, was a writer and teacher from Puerto Rico.[5] When Vega was two and a half, her family moved to New York City. She grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side.[6] She was not aware of having a different biological father until she was nine years old. They met for the first time in her late 20s and remain in contact.[7]

She attended the High School of Performing Arts where she studied modern dance and graduated in 1977.

Career

1980s

While majoring in English literature at Barnard College,[8] she performed in small venues in Greenwich Village, where she was a regular contributor to Jack Hardy's Monday night songwriters' group at the Cornelia Street Cafe and had some of her first songs published on Fast Folk anthology albums.[9] In 1984, she received a major label recording contract, making her one of the first Fast Folk artists to break out on a major label.

Vega's self-titled debut album was released in 1985 and was well received by critics in the U.S.;[6] it reached platinum status in the United Kingdom. Produced by Lenny Kaye and Steve Addabbo, the songs feature Vega's acoustic guitar in straightforward arrangements. A video was released for the album's song Marlene on the Wall, which went into MTV and VH1's rotations. During this period Vega also wrote lyrics for two songs (Lightning and Freezing) on Songs from Liquid Days by composer Philip Glass.[10]

Vega's song Left of Center co-written with Steve Addabbo for the 1986 John Hughes film Pretty in Pink reached number 32 on the British Singles Chart in 1986.[11]

Her next effort, Solitude Standing (1987), garnered critical and commercial success, selling over a million copies in the U.S.[12] It includes the international hit single Luka, which is written about, and from the point of view of, an abused child—at the time an uncommon subject for a pop hit. While continuing a focus on Vega's acoustic guitar, the music is more strongly pop-oriented and features fuller arrangements. The a cappella Tom's Diner from this album was later a hit, remixed by two British dance producers under the name DNA, in 1990. The track was originally a bootleg, until Vega allowed DNA to release through her record company, and it became her all-time biggest hit.

1990s

Vega's third album, Days of Open Hand (1990), continued in the style of her first two albums.

In 1992 she released the album 99.9F°. It consists of a mixture of folk music, dance beats and industrial music. This record was awarded Gold status by the RIAA in recognition of selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S.[12] The single "Blood Makes Noise" from this album peaked at number one on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks.

Her fifth album, Nine Objects of Desire, was released in 1996. The music varies between a frugal, simple style and the industrial production of 99.9F°. This album contains Caramel, featured in the movie The Truth About Cats & Dogs and, later, the trailer for the movie Closer. A song not included on that album, Woman on the Tier, was featured on the soundtrack of the movie Dead Man Walking.

In 1997 she took a singing part on the concept album Heaven and Hell, a musical interpretation of the seven deadly sins by her colleague Joe Jackson, with whom she had already collaborated in 1986 on Left of Center from the Pretty in Pink soundtrack (with Vega singing and Jackson playing piano).[13]

In 1999, Avon Books published Vega's book The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writings of Suzanne Vega, a volume of poems, lyrics, essays and journalistic pieces.[14]

2000s

On stage, 2008

In September 2001, Vega released a new album entitled Songs in Red and Gray. Three songs deal with Vega's divorce from her first husband, Mitchell Froom.

At the memorial concert for her brother Tim Vega in December 2002, Vega began her role as the subject of the direct-cinema documentary, Some Journey, directed by Christopher Seufert of Mooncusser Films. The documentary has not been completed.

Hip hop group Felt named a track #5 on their album Felt: A Tribute to Christina Ricci released on 10 December 2002 Suzanne Vega.[15]

In 2003, the twenty-one-song greatest hits compilation Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega was released. (The UK version of Retrospective included an eight-song bonus CD as well as a DVD containing twelve songs.) In the same year she was invited by Grammy Award-winning jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, to play at the Century of Song concerts at the famed RuhrTriennale in Germany.

In 2003, she hosted the American Public Media radio series American Mavericks, about 20th century American composers, which received the Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting.[16][17]

On August 3, 2006, Vega became the first major recording artist to perform live in the Internet-based virtual world, Second Life. The event was hosted by John Hockenberry of public radio's The Infinite Mind.

On September 17, 2006, she performed in Central Park, as part of a benefit concert for the Save Darfur Coalition.[18] During the concert she highlighted her support for Amnesty International, of which she has been a member since 1988.[19] [20]

In early October 2006, Vega took part in the Academia Film Olomouc (AFO) in Olomouc, the Czech Republic, the oldest festival of documentary films in Europe, in which she appeared as a main guest. She was invited there as the subject of the documentary film by director Christopher Seufert, that had a test screening at the festival. At the end of the festival she performed her classic songs and added one brand new piece called New York Is a Woman.

Vega is also interviewed in the book Everything Is Just a Bet which was published in Czech in October 2006. The book contains twelve interview transcriptions from the talk show called Stage Talks that regularly runs in the Švandovo divadlo (Švandovo Theatre) in Prague. Vega introduced the book to the audience of the Švandovo divadlo (Švandovo Theatre), and together with some other Czech celebrities gave a signing session.

She signed a new recording contract with Blue Note Records in the spring of 2006, and released Beauty & Crime on July 17, 2007. The album was produced by Jimmy Hogarth, which won a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. Her contract was not renewed and she was dropped in June 2008.[21]

In 2007, Vega followed the lead of numerous other mainstream artists and released her track Pornographer's Dream as podsafe. The song spent two weeks at #1 during 2007 and finished as the #11[22] hit of the year on the PMC Top10's annual countdown. In 2015, Vega joined The 14th Annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers.[23] [24] [25] She was also a judge for the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th Independent Music Awards.[26]

2010s

Suzanne Vega at Union Chapel, London June 18th 2015. Improvising by using the pulpit.

A partial cover version of her song Tom's Diner was used to introduce the 2010 British movie 4.3.2.1, with its lyrics largely rewritten to echo the plot. This musical hybrid was released as Keep Moving. Vega participated in the Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse/David Lynch collaboration Dark Night of the Soul. She wrote both melody and lyrics for her song, which is titled The Man Who Played God, inspired by a biography of Pablo Picasso. Vega sang lead vocals on the song Now I Am an Arsonist with singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton on his 2011 album, Artificial Heart.

Vega has re-recorded her back-catalogue,[27] both for artistic and commercial (and control) reasons,[28][29] in the Close-up series. Vol. 1 (Love Songs) and Vol. 2 (People & Places) appeared in 2010 while Vol. 3 (States of Being) was released in July 2011[30] followed by Vol. 4 (Songs of Family) in September 2012. Volumes 2, 3 and 4 of the Close-Up albums included previously unrecorded material; Volumes 2 and 3 each included one new collaboratively written song, while Volume 4 included three songs that Vega had written years earlier, but had not previously gotten around to recording. In all, Vega's Close-Up series features 60 re-recorded songs and five new compositions, representing about three-quarters of her lifetime songwriting output.

While performing live, Vega and long-term collaborator Gerry Leonard began to introduce a number of new songs into the setlist, including the live favorite I Never Wear White. Over the course of a year, the songs were completed and recorded in a live-studio setting with the help of a number of guests. Produced by Leonard, Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles was released in February 2014.[31] It was her first album of new material in seven years and became Vega's first studio album to reach the UK Top 40 since 1992, peaking at #37.

New album Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers was released on October 14, 2016.[32][33]

Songwriting

At the age of nine she began to write poetry. She was encouraged to do so by her stepfather.[34] It took her 3 years to write her first song, Brother Mine, it was ready at the age of 14.[35] It was first published on Close-Up Vol. 4, Songs of Family, along with her other early song, The Silver Lady.[34]

Vega hasn't learned to read musical notes, she sees the melody as a shape and chords as colors. She focuses on lyrics and melodic ideas, for advanced features - like intros or bridges - she relies on other artists she works with.[34] Most of her albums, except the first one, was made in such cooperation.[36]

She claims that 80% of the songs she started writing get finished.[35]

The most important artistic influence on her work comes from Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Some other important artists for her are Paul Simon and Laura Nyro.[35]

Theater

Vega and Duncan Sheik wrote a play Carson McCullers Talks About Love, about the life of the writer Carson McCullers. In the play, which premiered in 2011, Vega alternates between monologue and songs.[37][38][39] Vega and Sheik were nominated for Outstanding Music in a Play for the 57th annual Drama Desk awards.[40]

The album Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers, based on this play, was released in 2016.[32][33] Vega considers it to be a third version, because it's rewritten, and she made the first version in college.[7]

Amanuensis Productions

Vega has established her own recording label after 2008 economic crisis. In that moment she has stopped working for Blue Note Records and started thinking about re-recording her back catalog with new arrangements and gaining control over her works (which she eventually did with Close-Up Series).[34]

The name "Amanuensis Productions" was meant as a private joke about "servant" (amanuensis) owning the "masters" (recording masters), also a pun at A&M still legally owning her previous master tapes.[36]

Running such label proved to be harder than she expected. In 2015 it just "broke even", but new licenses were coming for Tom's Diner.[41]

Personal life

On March 17, 1995, Vega married Mitchell Froom, a musician and a record producer (who played on and produced 99.9F° and Nine Objects of Desire). They have a daughter, Ruby Froom (born July 8, 1994). The band Soul Coughing's Ruby Vroom album was named after her, with Vega's approval.[42] Recently Ruby sang with her mother on a couple of occasions.[43][44][45][46] Vega and Froom separated and divorced in 1998.

On February 11, 2006, Vega married Paul Mills, a lawyer.[47]

Vega practices Nichiren Buddhism and is a member of the US branch of the worldwide Buddhist association Soka Gakkai International.[48]

Works

Studio albums
Books

References

  1. ↑ Allmusic biography: Suzanne Vega
  2. ↑ BBC Four: Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega, Loudon Wainwright
  3. ↑ Curtis, Kim (September 28, 2001), "Softer, earthier Vega releases new album", Reading Eagle, Reading Eagle Company, retrieved April 30, 2010
  4. ↑ Huey, Steve, "Suzanne Vega Biography", AllMusic, Rovi Corporation, retrieved April 30, 2010
  5. ↑ Archived November 11, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. 1 2 "Suzanne Vega: A Life in Music". Official Community of Suzanne Vega. Archived from the original on April 19, 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-26.
  7. 1 2 Anthony, Andrew. "Suzanne Vega: 'It's taken me a while to say, You are what you are, it's fine'". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
  8. ↑ "Biography". Official Community of Suzanne Vega. Archived from the original on April 30, 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-26.
  9. ↑ Fricke, David. Suzanne Vega Album Review, Rolling Stone, July 4, 1985. Accessed June 5, 2009.
  10. ↑ Holden, Stephen (April 20, 1986). "Philip Glass Turns to the Song". The New York Times. New York, NY. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
  11. ↑ Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 584. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.
  12. 1 2 "RIAA – Gold & Platinum Searchable Database – June 23, 2015". Riaa.com. RIAA.
  13. ↑ Morse, Steve (September 5, 1997). "Stepping Out: Pop star turned classical composer, Joe Jackson takes on the Seven Deadly Sins". Santa Cruz Sentinel. Santa Cruz, CA. Retrieved July 12, 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ Gewertz, Daniel (February 24, 1999). "Vega has 'Eye' for passionate poetry". The Boston Herald. Boston, MA. Retrieved June 28, 2016. – via HighBeam Research (subscription required)
  15. ↑ "A Tribute To Christina Ricci". Tidal.
  16. ↑ "Nuclear weapons, affirmative action works awarded". The Gettysburg Times. Gettysburg, PA. AP. April 2, 2004. Retrieved July 12, 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. ↑ "American Mavericks". Publicradio.org. American Public Media. 2016. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
  18. ↑ "American Jewish World Service". Ajws.org. Retrieved 2011-10-18.
  19. ↑ The Official Suzanne Vega Website .::. By Suzanne: Articles, Poetry and Essays. Web.archive.org (November 11, 2006). Retrieved on 2011-05-07.
  20. ↑ Archived November 11, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  21. ↑ http://www.suzannevega.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?4160/5619
  22. ↑ Doelle, Chris (January 5, 2008). "PMC Top10–010408 – Top Hits of 2007!!!". PMC Top10. Archived from the original on March 25, 2008. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
  23. ↑ "Independent Music Awards". Independent Music Awards. Retrieved 2011-10-18.
  24. ↑ MicControl Archived May 9, 2015, at the Wayback Machine.
  25. ↑ "Top40-Charts.com". Top40-Charts.com. Retrieved 2011-10-18.
  26. ↑ "Independent Music Awards – Past Judges". Independentmusicawards.com. Retrieved 2011-10-18.
  27. ↑ Suzanne Vega | Brief Bio 2010. Suzannevega.com. Retrieved on 2011-05-07.
  28. ↑ "Suzanne Vega's Close-Up series more than meets the eye". Mbbarton.wordpress.com. March 17, 2010. Archived from the original on July 20, 2010.
  29. ↑ Theo Spielberg (November 4, 2011). "Suzanne Vega Proudly Embraces Her Role as 'The Mother of the MP3'". spinner.com.
  30. ↑ Twitter / Suzanne Vega: Vol 3 of Close-Up coming out in July of this year – States of Being. Twitter.com. Retrieved on 2011-05-24.
  31. ↑ "Ishtar Press-release Announcement headliner for the Festival Antigel in Geneva, February 15, 2014
  32. 1 2 Ayers, Mike (6 July 2016). "Hear Suzanne Vega's New Song 'We of Me' From Her Upcoming Album Inspired by Writer Carson McCullers (Exclusive)". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
  33. 1 2 "Suzanne Vega Lover, Beloved: Songs From An Evening With Carson McCullers". Nimbit. Retrieved 14 October 2016.
  34. 1 2 3 4 Barber, Simon and O’Connor, Brian (27 November 2013). "Episode 49 – Suzanne Vega". Sodajerker. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
  35. 1 2 3 Vega, Suzanne (1 October 2012). "Suzanne Vega" (Interview). Interview with Schlansky, Evan. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
  36. 1 2 O Hillis, Dean (17 March 2015). "A Melody – A Chord – A Lyric: A Conversation with Suzanne Vega". SLUG Magazine. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  37. ↑ Alan Light (April 27, 2011). "Suzanne Vega's 'Carson McCullers Talks About Love'". NYTimes.com. Retrieved May 26, 2011.
  38. ↑ Charles Isherwood (May 5, 2011). "The Alienated Souls Whisperer". NYTimes.com. Retrieved May 27, 2011.
  39. ↑ Dan Bacalzo (May 6, 2011). "Carson McCullers Talks About Love". Retrieved May 27, 2011.
  40. ↑ "2012 Nominees – 57th Annual Drama Desk Awards". Dramadeskawards.com. Retrieved 2012-09-07.
  41. ↑ Deeks, Russell (14 May 2015). "Interview: Suzanne Vega". Songwriting. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  42. ↑ "Fun Facts Music". Official Community of Suzanne Vega. Archived from the original on May 15, 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-22.
  43. ↑ "Suzanne Vega and Ruby Froom at the City Winery 06-May-2010".
  44. ↑ "Mother & Daughter Vega".
  45. ↑ "Ruby singing with me tonight.". January 8, 2011.
  46. ↑ "Suzanne Vega and Ruby Froom at Joe's Pub in NYC on November 14, 2014".
  47. ↑ "The Official Suzanne Vega website". Suzanne Vega. May 6, 2006. Archived from the original on May 6, 2006. Retrieved 2010-12-22.
  48. ↑ "SGI-USA Members in New York Celebrate Spring". Soka Gakkai International. February 2008. Retrieved 2013-10-19.
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