Queen of the Bohemian Dream

FRAN LANDESMAN and SIMON WALLACE

Since 1994 Fran Landesman and Simon Wallace have been meeting more or less every week to write songs. The result is an extraordinary catalogue of several hundred beautifully crafted songs which are now being discovered by major artists on both sides of the Atlantic. Shows based on their work have been produced in New York, Edinburgh,Bath, Gdansk and in London by the Royal Shakespeare Company and at the National Theatre  Fran’s history as a lyricist goes back to St Louis in the early 1950s when she and composer Tommy Wolf began writing songs that were to become part of ‘The Great American Songbook’. “Spring Can Hang You Up The Most” and the ”Ballad of the Sad Young Men” were recorded by some of the 20th Century’s greatest singers, including Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand and Sarah Vaughan, bringing the language and ideas of the beat generation poets to mainstream America.

Fran moved to London in 1964 but continued writing songs with composers on both sides of the Atlantic. Her collaboration with singer/composer Bob Dorough produced many great songs including the standard “A Small Day Tomorrow” and “Nothing Like You” recorded by Miles Davis for his “Sorcerer” . album. She also wrote some great songs in the 1960s and 70s with Steve Allen, Alec Wilder, Dudley Moore, Georgie Fame, John Simon and Roy Kral. 

Simon Wallace was born when the Landesman/Wolf partnership was at its zenith. For the last thirty years he has worked internationally as a jazz musician, musical director and composer as well as writing music for some of  Britain’s most popular TV shows including ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ and ‘French and Saunders’. His concert works include two symphonies commissioned by the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra for state occasions in honor of His Majesty The King of Thailand.