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Karen Mason and Louis Rosen:
Ages Since the Last Time
May 16, 2024
Karen Mason and Louis Rosen met back in the 70s in Chicago. Karen was a young singer accompanied by a the incomparable pianist-songwriter Brian Lasser. He was close friends with guitarist, pianist-songwriter, Louis Rosen. Mason and Lasser moved to New York and two years later Rosen was there as well. A little over ten years later Lasser died of AIDS. Rosen and Mason have made sure that Lasser’s music is remembered.
Mason and Rosen are back together again celebrating nearly 50 years of collaboration and friendship. The evening is stripped down bare with Rosen on guitar and piano and Mason and Rosen on vocals. Most of the material is Rosen’s songs many from his most recent albums, but added are a few selections by Lasser, that make you know he died way to soon.
Rosen’s music is what singer/songwriters use to write, full of blues riffs, uplifting swing, folk melodies, jazz cadences and soulful powerful lyrics. It is like an old soul left their words to impart. This night so made me want to hear his newest album “Love and Ashes”. Rosen is a musicians musician.
“A master interpreter… Mason produces a depth of sound and brilliance of color that converge in the work of very few singers!” (Chicago Tribune)
Mason has an authenticity to her voice. She is a storyteller, rich in tone and truly excels on Lasser’s music. She is a belter at heart, but Rosen’s music has her venerable and exposed, which is a new side to her art.
It is always wonderful to watch two artists collaborate,
Karen Mason and Louis Rosen –
“Ages Since the Last Time”
Posted on May 15, 2024 by Alix Cohen in Playing Around
Karen Mason and Louis Rosen came up in Chicago together 50 years ago. Mason was a singing hostess at “class joint” Lawrence of Oregano. Her musical director, Brian Lasser, who passed in 1992, had gone to school with Rosen and connected them. She debuted two of Rosen’s songs. The Broadway and cabaret veteran is likely known to you.
Composer/songwriter Rosen has been, besides writing and recording, an immensely popular teacher at 92Y over 35 years-everything from theory and classical, to rock, pop, and musical theater. Both have released multiple albums.
Affection and respect are palpable. Rosen, who rarely performs, is in familiar territory playing and singing his own work. Though she’s presented some of her friend’s songs, Mason is unaccustomed to solo guitar accompaniment. (Her collaborator segues back and forth from piano to guitar.) She rises to the occasion with thoughtful, pristine vocals. Mason’s sound is bright, Rosen’s cottony.
“I Want to Live to Love You”- short chords and elongated lyrics (masculine and feminine?) - Mason closes her eyes: I wanna hide in our unmade bed, she sings, savoring, envisioning, humming. Rosen is at the piano for a solo “Notre Dame is Burning”…arson from within…Flames consume the air/Heartbreak everywhere…which mourns a number of disasters. An anthem of helpless despair.
The duet “I Need You” has lyrics which Cole Porter and Larry Hart would appreciate: I need you like a seed needs the rain/Like pleasure needs pain; Like a well needs a spring/And a wish needs a well… With a twang and a grin the two performers play lyrical ping-pong. “Brian (Lasser) understood the word show in show business”, Rosen begins. “We have a belter here” – he nods to Mason. Lasser’s buoyant, sophisticated “Tear Up the Town” emerges like the powerful spritz of shaken, uncorked champagne. “Who else would change octaves on the last note,” Mason quips.
From Rosen’s first CD, ‘Southside Stories’, we hear Mason render “Troubled Children”: Ronnie and me at the back of a bus –her shoulder rises…daring and eager, but scared… Chasing our dreams, unprepared…Hands clasp each other around the microphone stand. It’s a story-song about missed opportunities made touching by aching melody and unnecessary death. The ballad “Morning Soul” emerges sighing and stretching – with gratitude: I built the wall/And you had the will to climb…Guitar and vocal are delicate.
“There are no second acts in American lives” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, who clearly met none of our politicians) introduces Rosen’s “My Third Act.” The protagonist approaches a young waitress, who responds, “You remind me of my dad, this might be fun,” to which he responds, “Call me ‘Pops’, my third act has begun.” It’s droll and resigned, but not passive. “Gonna pack my pills, my back brace and my gun…” If not humor to get us through, then what?
Mason’s interpretation of “Chicago” (Fred Fisher 1922) accompanied by guitar sounds like the era in which it was birthed. Slow and mournful, it evokes black and white gangster films. Rosen’s “Dust to Dust Blues” arrives on its tail: I’ve been in the wilderness…I seek out the holiness…A rambling tune filled with smokestacks and slaughter houses perhaps seen from passing boxcars might easily have been written by by Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger. Clarity of notes rather than strumming affects.
“Love and Ashes” from Rosen’s most recent CD finds the songwriter hunched over the piano: The beauty of life and the heartbreak of living are one…Mason sings evoking shadows, clothes discarded on the floor, a half bottle of MacCallan whiskey. The pair close with a duet of “Dinnertime at Jimmy’s,” a Covid song of nostalgia for community.
Karen Mason and Louis Rosen at Chelsea Table and Stage
May 11 & 12 2024
152 West 26th Street
Karen Mason and Louis Rosen Reunite, Back Home in Chicago
by Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune, October 21, 2016
It's not billed as such, but the performances taking place this week at Davenport's amount to a poignant reunion.
For back in the 1970s, a young singer from Arlington Heights named Karen Mason was launching what would become a distinguished national career, accompanied by a comparably gifted Chicago pianist-songwriter named Brian Lasser. He was close friends with another fledgling Chicago tunesmith, Louis Rosen, the two having first gotten to know each other — and share their show-business dreams — as kids on the South Side of Chicago.
Mason and Lasser moved to New York in 1979, and Rosen headed there in 1981, three Chicagoans intent on conquering Manhattan.
But Lasser died tragically in 1992 of AIDS, at age 40, and Mason has nurtured his memory ever since, featuring some of his music in virtually every solo show she has performed. Rosen, meanwhile, organized and hosted Lasser's memorial, the three musicians linked for all time by personal history and, of course, music.
Now, for the first time, Mason and Rosen have created a show of their own, and it features, naturally, music of Lasser and Rosen. It's as if three former Chicagoans were coming back home together, though only two will be here in the flesh for this week's world premiere engagement.
"I'm nervous," says Mason, whose mighty pipes and gutsy delivery on stage suggest nothing but supreme confidence.
"I'm nervous not because of being on stage with Louis — this whole year has been about doing things that I've been scared to do. … Without sounding too maudlin, it's like I see how many years I have left, and I just want to jump into the deep end of the pool and not say 'no' to things that scare me."
Surely the Mason-Rosen show is fraught with challenges, musically and emotionally. For starters, Mason will be performing alone with Rosen, who sings and plays guitar — and without any other instrumental accompaniment. There's a heightened degree of exposure and, therefore, vulnerability built into this kind of intimate duo format. Furthermore, Mason will be performing new material by Rosen, classics by Lasser and vintage songs of Rosen that Mason and Lasser performed here in the '70s. The latter are likely to rekindle very warm memories.
"Brian and I grew up together," recalls Rosen, the two attending Bowen High School. "We knew each other from the (Jewish Community Center). He was a few years older than me.
"The fact that we were both songwriters drew us together, and, really, for the rest of our lives we were not only dear friends but musical confidantes.
"He'd often be one of the first persons who would hear something I was doing, and I'd hear some of his songs early on. We told each other the truth."
So the connections among these three artists ran deep, Mason and Lasser at one point having incorporated five of Rosen's songs in a single show, says Rosen. What's surprising, then, is that it has taken so long for Mason and Rosen to create an evening that celebrates and explores these overlapping friendships and artistic partnerships.
The venture came about nearly by happenstance, with Rosen inviting Mason to participate in a retrospective of his songwriting career last June the 92nd Street Y, in New York, where Rosen has taught music for more than three decades. Both realized anew the depth of their friendship, they say, inspiring Mason to ask: "Would you come to Chicago and do a show?" remembers Rosen.
He immediately said yes and began searching for repertoire they might perform, together and solo. Among his archives he found a demo tape of a tune of his from the 1970s, "Ages Since the Last Time," and sent it to Mason.
She listened, called him up and said, "Who's singing?" remembers Mason.
"He said, 'It's you.' It was from 1976, 1977. I didn't even recognize my own voice."
Perhaps that's not so surprising, and not only because voices evolve through the decades, typically getting lower in pitch and, sometimes, richer in tone. But that's not the only reason Mason believes she didn't recognize the younger version of herself.
"To my ear it sounds more stylized," says Mason. "I think I was really trying to find out who I was. Now I've maybe found out who I am. And I'm a little bit more comfortable with myself vocally."
Indeed, Mason stands as a widely accomplished and dramatically fearless cabaret and theatrical singer, a rightful heir to such ferocious song interpreters as Julie Wilson and Elaine Stritch. Add to this a voice that works on all eight cylinders, and you have a performer of uncommon prowess.
But Mason sounds different in this show, she and Rosen believe, his songs bringing forth another side of her art.
"Sometimes we joke that she's singing quieter than she's ever sung before," says Rosen. "And I think for her it's been fun not having to deliver that big, Broadway, 11 o'clock (song) approach."
Or, as Mason puts it, "I'm having to listen — this sounds very actor-y — it's forcing me to listen to somebody else on stage, and share."
As for the Lasser material, Rosen sums up a sentiment that he and Mason probably share.
"I feel now it's a debt being repaid," says Rosen, "in that Brian was the first person — when he worked with Karen — to champion my songs."
Quite a reunion.
"Mason & Rosen: Two Friends — Love of Song" plays at 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday at Davenport's, 1383 N. Milwaukee Ave.; $28 plus two-drink minimum; 773-278-1830 or www.davenportspianobar.com.
Twitter @howardreich
Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune
Karen Mason & Louis Rosen
Two Friends/Love of Song
The Duplex, NYC, December 28, 2016
Reviewed by Alix Cohen
“I sing for you/I sing for me/I sing for love/Love of song….” Luxuriating in the vocal expression of warm, elongated notes, actress/vocalist Karen Mason and musician/songwriter Louis Rosen open by palpably sharing delight in their craft. (Louis Rosen’s “Love of Song”)
Forty years ago friend/fellow writer Brian Lasser encouraged Rosen to come hear a singer for whom Lasser was musical director. That singer was Karen Mason. Though Mason and Rosen have kept warm relations (Lasser passed in 1992), they’ve never before done an entire show together. This outing offers original material by Rosen and Lasser. While the former’s muse rests in a soft rock/folk tradition of very personal lyrics, songs by the latter seem geared toward revue and musical theater performance.
Accompanying tonight’s show on piano and guitar, Rosen would be the first to admit he’s not a singer. He is, however, intimate with the work’s inception and, like many songwriters, conveys elements others might find elusive. Mason furnishes both polished sound and the interpretation of a veteran theater professional. Signature belting and high dudgeon are
almost completely absent during an evening when the artist draws from a deep emotional well with apt reserve.
Some of Rosen’s best are: “The South Side,” a Randy Newman‐ish tale about the South Side of Chicago (his childhood home): “…It was bungalows all in a row/Where a family dream could grow/And only Democrats knew where the bodies were buried…”; the wry and eloquent “I Need You” (rendered as a duet): “…like a seed needs the rain/like pleasure needs pain…like yang needs some yin/like confession needs sin…” during which the performers affectionately “tickle” one another with examples; and “Half the Bed,” sung by an abandoned woman to a melody that circles back on itself like a helix—or perhaps unrelenting memories. (Mason enables us to see the empty sheets.)
A tandem “Chicago” and Rosen’s “Dust to Dust Blues” work wonderfully together, not the least because of Rosen’s truly original arrangement of the iconic Fred Fisher song. Mason paints the city sound shadowed, but homey. (This should be turned into a full length number, perhaps for one of her own shows.) Rosen soulfully mines his past. “… I seek out the holiness here in the wilderness…” which echoes like a classic, hop‐a‐freight folk refrain.
Lasser’s songs include such as “How Long Has It Been?”—”Look, we’re all grown up…Not what we had planned…”—a convincing conversation as presented by Mason, simple, halting, true; “Tear Up the Town,” a tap tempo production‐number‐in‐waiting with the vocalist in Broadway mode; and “Becoming My Mother,” sweet sentiment performed reflectively, inspired by Mason’s turning 30.
The evening concludes with Rosen’s “Lullaby for Teddy” (his now college‐aged son): “…sleep won’t harm or scare or charm….” While it might have arrived more dulcet in Mason’s capable hands, feeling weighs equally here. The author’s last whispered, slightly choked “Goodnight, Teddy” lands like a well‐watched feather.