‘Clouds in My Coffee’ stirs renewed interest in female songwriters of the ’70s

Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon belong at the top of any list of 20th-century women singer-songwriters. 

For anyone unconvinced about the merits of this particular trinity, on July 29, the Ravinia Festival will present a specially arranged holy book: “Clouds in My Coffee: The Trailblazing Music of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon.” The concert won’t simply feature straightforward covers of famous songs by these revered composers. Instead, it showcases Broadway singers offering their fresh takes on folk-pop standards, accompanied not by guitar or piano, but by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The songs of “Blue,” “Tapestry” and many more platinum-certified albums have long reverberated in the hearts of longtime fans, who’ve been humming them for decades. “This is the music I enjoy relaxing to. It’s the soundtrack of my life,” said Ted Sperling, the award-winning orchestrator and conductor who came up with the concert concept. “That’s really the inspiration for putting this program together.”

But now fans can hear them in an entirely new way. “They’re not literal versions from the albums, translated verbatim to the stage,” said Sperling, who will conduct the CSO in the program. “Actually, it’s a bit of a challenge: How do you translate these songs for the orchestra? We have quite a range of ways of interpreting them.”

To celebrate this acclaimed triumvirate of songwriters, Sperling has chosen three impressive vocalists: Morgan James, Capathia Jenkins and Andréa Burns. All have starred on Broadway, have extensive concert experience and of course, they share a deep admiration for the three composer-performers.

With one foot in the classical world and another in theater, Sperling excels at interpretation, as proven by his Tony Award in 2005 for his orchestrations of The Light in the Piazza. (His first full-time job, a few months after graduating from Yale, was playing synthesizer in the orchestra for the groundbreaking 1984 Broadway premiere of the Sondheim-Lapine musical “Sunday in the Park with George.”)

Now 61, the Manhattan native learned how to play viola, violin and piano while growing up in a household whose radio was tuned solely to classical music. He started conducting lessons in seventh grade; soon enough, he conducted the glee club and the orchestra in high school.

He traces his admiration of the pop stylings of Joni, Carole and Carly to this era. “I was a kid at the right time,” he said. “I would’ve been a young teenager when they were at their absolute hottest moment in the ’70s.” He couldn’t absorb their songs at home, but carpools to school were another story: “I listened to pop music in the car, when I was with other kids and other drivers, on the way to school and back.” That’s how he discovered many hitmakers of the era, including the Carpenters, Cher and Helen Reddy.

As for his favorite song or album by each of the three featured composers, Sperling has immediate answers. “ ‘You’re So Vain’ — the title just grabs you, doesn’t it? You feel like Carly’s singing to you. Something about that lyric immediately provoked me when I first heard it.” It clearly still captures his imagination, considering that he lifted part of Simon’s lyrics for the concert title: But you gave away the things you loved / And one of them was me / I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee.

For the other two artists, Sperling cites Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” and Carole King’s “Tapestry,” both runaway hits. The latter is especially present in Sperling’s life: “My husband and one of our daughters are both learning to play their way through that album on piano,” he said. “Each week, they tackle a different tune. Basically, I get a little recital of ‘Tapestry’ almost every day.”

Sperling also hopes the event can influence the way people think of their music — as timeless classics that have exerted an enormous influence over successive generations. “I’m very excited to explore this genre of music with the symphony,” he said. “Everybody talks about the Great American Songbook, but it seems to end in the early ’60s. I feel like there’s a second generation, and I’m eager to explore that. I hope this will be the first in a series.”

He plans  to “set myself a challenge to find the three men who would be the equivalent for me of Carole, Carly and Joni.”

While he has three names in mind, Sperling wants to deliberate longer before committing to his choices in public. Still, it’s no surprise that he’s willing to name one particular troubadour — a man who dated Joni, married Carly and often collaborated with Carole: “James Taylor would certainly be my go-to person.”

This is an excerpt of an article that appears in Ravinia magazine. To read the full vesion, click here.