IF YOU GO Event: Judy Collins with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra When: Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Where: Symphony Hall, Springfield Cost: $22-$65 For more info: Call (413) 733-2291 or online at www.springfieldsymphony“Bows and flows of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air...” – if you grew up in the 1960s those lyrics from Judy Collins’ hit version of the...
“Bows and flows of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air...” – if you grew up in the 1960s those lyrics from Judy Collins’ hit version of the Joni Mitchell-penned “Both Sides Now” was part of the mysterious soundtrack of your dream-like teenage years.It’s been more than 45 years since her album “Wildflowers,” but Collins’ creative zest is as strong as ever. She is still writing and performing, and playing nearly100 dates a year around the United States, the next of which brings her to Springfield as guest artist with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra on Saturday night.
In addition to her 50-year career as a musician, Collins, 73, is also an accomplished painter, filmmaker, record label head, musical mentor, and an in-demand keynote speaker for mental health and suicide prevention.
Her eclectic, rather Renaissance outlook has always been centered in song.
“When a song really grabs you,” she told a New Zealand interviewer, “that’s when you can spend the time on it, and that’s been my entire life – I’ve been doing that since I was three years old.”
The three-year-old Collins enjoyed singing and playing instruments with her father in their Seattle home. The piano was an early inspiration, and Collins studied with pianist/conductor Antonia Brico – the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic. Collins would later co-direct a film about her career.
The times, as Bob Dylan would astutely observe, were a-changin’, however, and Collins changed with them, taking up the guitar and plunging whole-heartedly into the folk music scene from Denver to Chicago to New York to Boston, singing traditional tunes, covering the work of other folk artists, and discovering that her voice could touch and move people.
She signed with Elektra Records in 1961, and released her first album, “Maid of Constant Sorrow” at age 22. She was already an apt interpreter of Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and contemporaries, and she would soon help to bring other singer –songwriters, including Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and Randy Newman into the light of recognition.
Collins began writing her own songs in 1967, starting with “Since You’ve Asked” and following a thread of imagination that spawned classics like “The Blizzard,” “Albatross,” “The Life You Dream,” “Lovin’ and Leavin’” and many more. The songs blossomed and filled a string of Elektra discs, highlighted by 1970’s “Whales and Nightingales” and 1976’s “Bread and Roses.” Today, Collins continues to write and record, but she owns her own record label, Wildflower Records.
“No one likes change, but change comes, and with it comes the need to reinvent ourselves,” Collins wrote. She realized that to “make albums and keep doing the things I loved to do – sing, write, and bring great songs to the public,” she needed to start her own company.
Wildflower has since released “Portrait of an American Girl (2007), “Paradise” (2010) and most recently, “Bohemian,” (2011) a quintessential Collins collection of traditional music cheek by jowl with songs by Jacques Brel, Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Webb, and new original material, including “Morocco,” “Wings of Angels,” and “In the Twilight.” Wildflower also handles the music of Amy Speace and Kenny White.
“Starting Wildflower Records was a great idea and a great direction for me,” Collins wrote, “it gives me an opportunity to give back to younger artists and to discover new talent – I am first and foremost a fan, after all. That is the way I started out: loving the music, the artists, the life, and the path I have been so fortunate to walk.”
That path leads to Springfield Symphony Hall on Saturday, and certainly there will be fans there to greet her.