LANDESMAN

Born in New York City and after attending the Fashion Institute of Technology marrying writer Jay Landesman, Fran moved with her husband to St. Louis, his home town where he and his brother started the Crystal Palace night club. Her experiences sitting in the bar listening to musicians and audiences led her to begin writing song lyrics in 1952. One of her best known is “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most”, her exploration of T.S. Elliot’s “April is the cruelest month…” The Palace’s pianist Tommy Wolf set her lyrics to music. This led to The Nervous Set, a musical with music by Wolf and book by Jay Landesman, which had a brief run on Broadway. In 1964 the Landesmans moved to London where Fran wrote lyrics for a number of well known musicians such as Georgie Fame, Richard Rodney Bennett and Dudley Moore. She continued to write with USA composers, most notably Bob Dorough, Roy Kral, John Simon and Tommy Wolf. In the 1970s she began writing and publishing poetry as well as performing pieces at festivals and on BBC Radio. She collaborated with British composer Simon Wallace from 1994 until her death in 2011. There were a number of theatre shows based on their songs and for the last ten years of her life Fran performed frequently in London, reciting her poetry, singing her songs and occasionally talking about her life and work. Her last USA appearances were at New York’s Joe’s Pub in 2003 and St. Louis’ Gaslight Theatre in 2008