VA - Lives of the Saints - Portraits in Song with Words by David Hajdu (2025) [Hi-Res]

Hajdu has been writing songs about real-life figures and events for unique collaborations with jazz composers and performers for more than 15 years. Lives of the Saints is his fourth recording of such material. Viewing contemporary songwriting as autobiographical to a fault, Hajdu looks beyond his own experience for inspiration, bringing himself to the material through his idiosyncratic approach to language and creative collaboration. As Stephen Holden of The New York Times has described Hajdu's songs, they are "an unexpected happy marriage of Stephen Sondheim and Joni Mitchell for the 21st century."

For Lives of the Saint, Hajdu sought out a group of creative artists he admired but never worked with before. He had never met pianist/composer Helen Sung before reaching out to her. Hajdu had only heard and appreciated her work, especially her Sunnyside debut Sung with Words. Vocalist Aubrey Johnson caught Hajdu’s ear and he soon found her writing wonderful but underappreciated. Hajdu had become acquainted with trumpeter Dave Douglas years earlier and sought to renew their association for this project. Finally, Renee Rosnes, Hajdu's longtime collaborator, contributed two music for two pieces. As in his other projects, Hajdu wrote the words and produced the recording, while the composers handled the music. "I'm no Dave Douglas," Hajdu admits. "I'm happy in my own lane. It's hard enough to write words worthy of the music of creative artists like Dave and the others here."

Along with the composers, Hajdu welcomed woodwind player Chet Doxas, cellist Marika Hughes, bassist Simón Willson and drummer Rudy Royston to bring these pieces to life.

The subjects of the song vary from the famous to the unknown, from ancient history to the recent past. Hajdu came to know Lena Horne well near the end of her life, as he interviewed and befriended her around the time he wrote a book on Billy Strayhorn. Hedy Lamarr was someone Hajdu had long wanted to write about. Hajdu and Douglas brainstormed together to hatch plans to write about Hypatia and Leonora Carrington. Johnson suggested a song about Ada Lovelace, who coincidentally, Hajdu had just studied and wrote about for a new book.

The program begins with “Enchantress of Number,” with the music written by Johnson, about Ada Lovelace, the visionary of computer science wrote the first algorithm. Sung’s “Angelina’s Cry” dramatically tells the story of Italian immigrant Angelina Napolitano, whose killing of her abusive husband led to the awareness of domestic abuse. Douglas wrote the music to “I Weathered the Storm,” which focuses on Lena Horne and her difficult relationship to the world of Hollywood.

Rosnes’s “The Seafaring Maiden” tells the story of Bessie Hall, the daughter of a sea captain who took the command of her father's ship when the crew disabled by smallpox. Johnson wrote the music for “The White Rose,” a piece reflecting on the short life of Sophie Scholl, a young German woman and activist who was executed in Nazi Germany for resisting the war and its genocide. On “Pure Thought,” Hajdu and Douglas tell the story of Hypatia, an Egyptian philosopher who taught pagan and Christians, alike only to be executed for heresy. “Pretty Brilliant” highlights the brilliance of Hedy Lamarr, a woman who was praised the most beautiful woman in the world but under-appreciated for her scientific brilliance, having patented a technology that foreshadowed the principles of wifi and cellular communication decades before the digital era.

Sung’s music helps illustrate “The Nanny on Her Day Off,” a piece that celebrates the recently discovered genius of photographer Vivian Maier, while Douglas returns for “The Conjurer,” a piece that focuses on Leonora Carrington, a brilliant surrealist artist who was abused in a mental health facility and under-recognized the public who only regarded her as a n acolyte of her former partner, Max Ernst. The final piece celebrates an everyday saint, someone who was a huge part of Hajdu’s life until she died at a young age. “Song for My Sister” sings of love and suffering through Sung’s music and Douglas and Doxas’s poignant performances.

"As a longtime fan of David Hajdu's books and his lyrics, I was delighted to receive the invitation to both compose for and sing on Lives of the Saints," says Aubrey Johnson. "It's not every day that you get to sing with your heroes, hear them play your music, and sing theirs, but for me the recording of this project was just that. David Hajdu has assembled something truly special here through his lyrics and impeccable taste -- his musical insight as a producer was certainly as valuable as any of the other musicians on the project -- and I'm excited for the world to hear it."

Dave Douglas adds: "Lives of the Saints, a collection of pieces with lyrics by David Hajdu, are musical sketches of extraordinary women through history -- tone parallels, in the words of Duke Ellington. David’s smart, pithy lyrics clearly limn the lives of the saints. All of us involved in this project have all been lifted by the subjects David chose, and the listener can purely enjoy the words and music, or dig deeper into these lives -- lives which help point the way toward a just, creative, and healthy society."

There are many ways to be saintly, and not every way is always duly honored. David Hajdu’s Lives of the Saints celebrates a group of secular heroes whose varied achievements are beyond belief.

Aubrey Johnson - voice
Helen Sung - piano & keyboards
Dave Douglas - trumpet
Chet Doxas - clarinet & tenor saxophone
Marika Hughes - cello
Simón Willson - bass
Rudy Royston - drums
Samuel Torres - percussion