The Seckerson Tapes: Lucy Schaufer

A versatile American mezzo in London tells of her female-friendly debut album

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Lucy Schaufer: a kid from a small town called Carpentersville
Dan Welldon

Lucy Schaufer has always been one to confound our expectations. As she puts it herself, she’s “an American in London, conceived within the American Dream and living in the Old World.” As an indication of her boundless versatility she’s been seen here in roles as diverse as Claire DeLoone in Bernstein’s On the Town, Thea in Tippett’s The Knot Garden, and Jenny in Knussen’s Higglety Pigglety Pop! She made a huge impression at the Leicester Curve as Margaret in the UK premiere of Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza.

Carpentersville is her debut album and in this audio podcast she talks about her reasons for doing it, her choice of material, and who she is as an artist. “The voices heard in these songs," she says, “are women telling their stories of love, hope, humour, worries and woes from the simplicity of childhood dreams to the shattering acceptance of life’s limitations. And all of it through the vision of a kid who grew up in a small town outside Chicago called Carpentersville.”

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