Laura Freeman: Press

Laura Freeman — Somersault Season
This is a record I’ve been waiting to be released for over two years (Freeman sent me an advance copy of it that long ago) and I’ve been waiting, not very patiently, for it to actually come out. It’s a terrifically entertaining CD, themed (sometimes loosely) around the seasons. Like her previous (and very good) Color Wheel Cartwheel, the record does some genre-hopping — which usually falls into the “Jack of all trades, master of none” category, but not with Freeman. No matter the style of music, her personality provides a foundation to make it all work. In addition to doing kids’ music, Freeman performs cabaret and early-20th-century music in her hometown of Austin, Texas, and that theatrical vibe serves her very well here. LauraFreemanMusic.com

Brand new this month is an album by award winning musician/educator Laura Freeman. It’s called Somersault Season and it is exactly that….a musical tumble, roll, journey, and rolicking somersault through each of the four beautiful seasons of the year.

“I wrote these songs to keep busy active bodies moving all year long,” explains Freeman, who involved lots of children in the recording process. “I also wrote it to remind us to notice how the natural world is always changing around us. I love watching the seasons flow from one to the other. I hope I inspire others to do so.”

This CD lines up seamlessly with preschool educational standards and requirements. I can envision us using this album over and over again this school year as we get to the unit about calendar days, months, and our earth’s seasons.

This album follows two other award winning releases by Freeman, one of them (”A Baker’s Dozen”) being among one of the top children’s albums of 2004 (as voted by JustPlainFolks.org).

My kids laugh and laugh at the seemingly most popular tune on the CD, “My Brother’s a Monster.” (You can watch the whimsical music video here.) “Big City, Little City” also has a fun feeling to it — the superfast wording makes the kids silly just listening to it. It has a Greek-esque sound to it, its lyrics taking you on a virtual tour of the world’s most inviting cities and countries.

“Swoosh Swoosh” is a short, lifelike sound effects-based tribute to spring. This is my daughter’s favorite track, especially as the tempo grows faster and faster near the end!

“Look In A Book” prods your kids to realize that you can find out just about any information, adventure or help you seek within the pages of a book. (Yet another subtle way to inspire the love of reading!)

These are just a few of our favorites. Can you find yours?

Laura Freeman’s Somersault Season can be purchased via CDBaby for $15.

Win it! Thanks to Laura Freeman and Sugar Mountain PR, one of you can win a copy of Somersault Season! Simply head over to listen to some of the fantastic songs on this album, then come back and tell me your absolute fav. I’ll close the contest next Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 11pm EST. Sorry; US entries only. Good luck!

As a mother of 5-year-old twins and an almost-two-year old, I don’t have the luxury of kicking my heels up and reviewing music on my own. So, I popped in Laura Freeman’s latest release, “Somersault Season,” over lunch with the kids. That’s when I realized I had made a big mistake… but for a good reason! The music was so catchy that my kids barely ate their lunch. Instead they were dancing and singing and “shaking” on command.
Laura Freeman’s songs are grouped by season, featuring three songs for each of the four seasons. There is a spoken introduction before each season describing various facts from around the world. These facts are quick, interesting, and add another layer to the listening experience. However, my kids weren’t interested in hearing them for a second or third time. Thankfully, Freeman kept these fact-based introductions short and it wasn’t difficult for the kids to sit through the twenty-second interludes.
For most songs, it was apparent why they resided in their assigned season. “Frankenstein” in the fall category conjures up obvious images of Halloween costumes and ghoulish (or, in this case, not-so-ghoulish) monsters. “No Two Alike,” a sweet song about the unique qualities of snowflakes, clearly belonged in the winter.
For some songs, however, the connection was not at all obvious to me… even after I searched for it. “My Brother’s a Monster”, was a favorite of ours and a song that was very easy for the kids to pick up. My daughter had memorized almost the whole song after hearing it only once or twice. While a fun, catchy song, its connection to the season of spring was lost on me.
This CD definitely contains some gems. Our favorite song is definitely “Can You Shake It?” This song had all three of my children ignoring their lunches in favor of shaking it up and down, shaking it on their heads, etc. It was great to hear a song that even my youngest child (22 months) could easily understand. From 22 months up to 5 years old, all of my children were able to successfully and very enthusiastically act out all of the shaking that Freeman describes in her song.
Even though I discovered, the hard way, that this CD is not a good mealtime choice, it is definitely a good get-up-and-go/get-you-moving selection! Laura Freeman was mostly successful in creating a CD that achieves her goal of keeping “busy active bodies moving all year long.” There were a few songs that were, as my daughter put it, “less exciting.” Nonetheless, “Somersault Season” was definitely a hit with my kids. While many children’s music artists have music that is both accessible to children and enjoyable for adults (They Might Be Giants, Laurie Berkner, Dan Zanes, e.g.), this CD was less appealing to the mom and dad crowd. I was still very happy to discover this CD since it was very well-received by the younger crowd, for whom it is intended.

With numerous musical artists releasing new CDs during the summer months that coincide with their local, regional or national tours, we take a different look at one of the newest offerings from today’s children’s music industry.
The recently debuted CD, Somersault Season, puts another award-winning songwriter/vocalist, Laura Freeman, in the spotlight.
Somersault Season is Freeman’s third recording venture and it highlights her kid-friendly interactive strengths as an artist.
In her newest outing, Freeman’s cabaret/stage-style vocal range effectively shows off her pied piper mesmerizing style, which kids adore.
Hailing from Texas, Freeman is well accompanied by her young audience members in addition to guitar, ukulele, percussion, base, zils, mandolin, banjo, banjola and distinctive character voices. The entire effect is guaranteed to get junior couch potatoes up, moving and thinking.
Musical selections are categorized into seasons: spring; summer; fall and winter and interspersed among the songs are spoken word interludes where children learn new words to describe the seasons in Portuguese, Fante (from Ghana), Urdu (from Pakistan) and German.
Highlights from the CD include a rollicking rendition of My Brother’s a Monster, guaranteed to get kids growling and giggling while marching about and singing this catchy tune; Big City, Little City, which takes a child’s imagination on a folk music travelogue of worldwide locations and famous sites; Frankenstein, another catchy number that playfully rocks and rolls – nothing scary here; while No Two Alike thoughtfully reminds us of the individual wonder of a single snowflake.
"I wrote these songs to keep busy active bodies moving all year long,” said Freeman, who involved children in the recording process. “I also wrote it to remind us to notice how the natural world is always changing around us. I love watching the seasons flow from one to the other. I hope I inspire others to do so.”
Laura Freeman tours as an individual artist and as a member of the Hey Lolly Trio.
You can preview all 16 tracks of Laura Freeman’s Somersault Season at CD Baby where it is also exclusively sold.

Laura Freeman says she wrote the songs on her new CD “to keep busy active bodies moving all year long,” and I think she’s succeeded!

The theme of the CD is the seasons, which is neat. The songs are divided into each of the four seasons and each section is introduced by someone talking about the season and how it’s represented in different parts of the world (from Portugal to Pakistan).

But what I like most about this CD is the movement and interaction. In the song My Brother’s a Monster, the lyrics ask you to growl, roar, shuffle around, shake your claws, and stomp. So much fun to dance to! In 1, 2, 3, 4, you’re asked to touch the floor, tickle your knee, and dance!

But my favorite is Can You Shake it? Get out your shaker and follow the instructions: shake it high, low, fast, slow! We’ve never seen Laura in concert, but I’m sure she’s great fun as she gets the kids involved in helping her make the music.

Video: "My Brother's A Monster" - Laura Freeman

I've waited quite a bit for the release of Somersault Season, the latest album from Laura Freeman, the indie Laurie Berkner. (I know, I know, Laurie's technically indie, but you get my point.) The album's predecessor, Color Wheel Cartwheel, is just fantabulous but it's been a few years since its release. Well, Somersault Season is finally getting a release in just a couple weeks - July 11. And there's a video for "My Brother's A Monster." It's a little more low-tech than Berkner's videos are these days, but Berkner's got nothing on those hand-drawn monsters.

Laura Freeman's Somersault Season arrives a couple years after its demos were completed and a full four years after its excellent predecessor, Color Wheel Cartwheel (review), an album which I still play around the house, no small feat given the constant influx of material.

Like Cartwheel, Season is a concept album, except instead of colors, it's about the passing of the seasons. (TMBG can now cross Here Comes Seasons off their future sequels list.) Each season gets its own foreign-language introduction (a la the colors on Cartwheel) and three season-appropriate songs. As opposed to its predecessor, the songs here are more interactive, meaning that your kids (and you) will enjoy it more if you move. Stomp along with "My Brother's a Monster," shake along to "Can You Shake It?," or dance along with the western swing of "1, 2, 3, 4." Generally, the music takes a folk/bluegrass approach, aided especially by producer Mike West's mandolin and banjo work. Freeman's sly sense of humor is more prevalent live, but occasionally breaks through here on songs like the droll "Look in a Book."

The songs here are targeted very much at the kindergarten-and-under crowd (ages 2-5). You can hear samples at the album's CD Baby page. I'd also recommend Freeman's notes on the lyrics and activities.

Clearly my appreciation of Somersault Season is hampered somewhat by my affinity for Color Wheel Cartwheel, and while I'd recommend Cartwheel for an introduction to Laura Freeman over this new album (particularly as a pure listening experience), I like Somersault Season quite a bit, too. It's an especially good music-and-movement CD, heads and shoulders above most in that particular subgenre. Recommended.

With marvelous musical chops and styles as varied as jazz, R&B and country, Texas-based folk singer Laura Freeman and deft Louisiana musicians serve up an effervescent odyssey through the world of color — yellow "melts like butter on a cob of corn on a hot day in July," orange is a cha-cha lesson in color mixing and blue is a sweet and wacky progression from a sad whale to Bluebeard the pirate and his mom.

Color My World: A new CD by award-winning children's recording artist Laura Freeman explores the world of color through a multi-hued variety of music and language experience. Color Wheel Cartwheel introduces the word for "rainbow" and every color in it in English, Spanish, Farsi, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, German and Hindi. Each song is about a different color and uses a different type of music, such as lullabies, cha-cha and 50's pop. The CD was recorded in New Orleans, and to honor the New Orleans musicians featured on it, Freeman will donate at least $1 for each CD sold to Hurricane Katrina relief funds.

■ “Color Wheel Cartwheel” By Laura Freemanº Themed albums aimed at kids can be a good idea, especially if the concept holding the songs together is simple enough for children to understand. That’s definitely the case here, with seven songs devoted to the seven colors of the rainbow, divided by recitations of the words for “Rainbow” and the colors of the rainbow in different languages — Spanish, Dutch, Hindi and French.
Freeman recorded in New Orleans, and it shows. The musical accompaniment is a rousing combination of Dixieland horns, banjo and more. The festive New Orleans atmosphere carries over to the sometimes-silly songs, which name-check just about everything relating to a particular color you can think of. “Yellow” even calls out the titles to two other famous songs in its lyrics: “Mellow Yellow” and “Yellow Submarine.”
Perfect sing-along material for young toddlers learning their colors, this album offers a great opportunity to point out objects around your children that share similar hues.

Ever since the beginning of time, mankind has been fascinated by colors, whether it was religious symbolism, military strategy, social studies or free enterprise competition. But what would colors sound like if they had their own sonic identity? Those are the questions children’s entertainer Laura Freeman postulates here as each color of the rainbow becomes a song of its own as part of this educational vehicle. “Orange” becomes a horn-blasting cha-cha-cha salsa; “Yellow” seeps into slumbering trad jazz replete with a muted trombone. With each song, Freeman reinforces things that match the color, like “Green” that has alligators, snakes and grasshoppers with country-pickin’ guitarist Jeff Burke emulating different tones for each of God’s green creatures. “Red” becomes a rockin’ pop song with strawberries, watermelons, ladybugs and radishes. “Blue” features fiddler Neti Vaan copping the sounds of whales with her bow strokes. Though Freeman is loaded with sassy pipes, what makes this doubly fun is her vocal inflections that provide creative comedy in its own right. In between songs, guest musicians cite the colors of the rainbow in a foreign tongue such a Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Dutch and Farsi. Color this one fun for all ages.

This entertaining CD, which might be used to introduce the colors of the rainbow to young listeners, will find a ready place in public and school library collections – Booklist




We received this CD just in time for my daughter's birthday party, so I popped it in while the kids sat down to do an art project. Maybe it's just me, but I think this CD may be partly responsible for the lovely, colorful drawings that my daughter and her friends created! Seriously though, we especially like it for two reasons: 1) it features the colors of the rainbow in nine different languages, and 2) each song, named for a color of the rainbow, has it's own personality that really matches the color!
The CD opens with a man's voice listing the colors in British English. Then we hear a woman and child in Spanish before the song "Red." It's just what you'd expect - "Red hot!" - and both my girls' favorite. Mackie regaled us with her headbanger impersonation for that one. The song "Orange" is preceeded by the colors in Dutch..."Orange makes me want to cha-cha-cha!" Next come the colors in Dutch, Japanese, French, Italian, German, Farsi, and Hindi interspersed with the songs for "Yellow," "Green," "Blue," "Indigo and Violet," "Purple," and the last song, "Make a Rainbow." My personal favorite is the soulful and lively song "Green," which could truly be the VegetarianBaby.com theme song.
Each song is unique in another way, too: they each represent a different style of music, from country to R&B to 50s pop. It's a great introduction to a lot of things - languages, colors, musical styles - and that really appeals to me as a homeschooling mom. You'll hear a mixture of the following instruments: acoustic guitar, bass, fiddle, electric guitar, trombone, trumpet, drums, banjo, ukelele, mandolin, tambourine, accordion, congas, guiro and clave as well as a combination of vocal and other sounds, like clapping. This CD has it all!
Laura Freeman is a musician from Austin, TX, and her voice reminded me a bit of Michelle Shocked, yet her style is all her own. This CD was recorded in New Orleans with top local musicians. I get a warm feeling knowing that by listening to and promoting this CD I am supporting the people and musical tradition of that great city. $1 of every Cartwheel purchased goes to Common Ground for New Orleans Hurricane Katrina relief. The lyrics are available on the website, and you can listen to the songs there before you buy!
Get this CD for some lucky child, and you may just be tempted to pick one up for yourself, too.

Teacher’s Pick Best of 2005
Color Wheel Cartwheel
This CD takes a musical approach in helping children learn the colors of the rainbow. Tracks alternate between a wide variety of songs and translations of colors in Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Farsi, Italian and Hindi. The songs, ranging from the cha-cha to country, focus on every color of the rainbow—even being careful not to forget Indigo and Violet. Produced by Laura Freeman

Vibrant Music Hour
Laura Freeman's Monthly Shows
Laura Freeman's monthly children's music performances – often held at Ruta Maya cafe – coax wide grins from the grumpiest. Her newest show, Color Wheel Cartwheel, sets Roy G. Biv a-spinning in his rainbow footie pajamas. This happy, bouncy, and poetic children's music is written and sung by our local redheaded chanteuse, who leads the listener through the names of the colors of the rainbow in nine different languages: English, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, French, Italian, German, Farsi, and Hindi, respectively. She trills about the colors in tunes that mix the personalities of Patsy Cline and Carmen Miranda. Recommended for the younger set and anyone who needs to bounce around a-bopping without stopping.

Though many commendable records have come out of the two Ninth Ward Pickin' Parlor incarnations, West has never produced a project quite as spectacular as Luna Tart Died by Austin singer/songwriter Laura Freeman.  It isn't just a collection of touchy-feely coffeehouse originals, but rather a stunning theatrical manifesto chronicling the life of Luna Tart, a self absorbed woman who's infamous but obsessed with fame to the point of being delusional.  She joins the circus, hooks up with a sugar daddy, blows his moolah, cheats on him, and has plenty of dark, dour moments in between.

In short, Freeman's performance is nothing less than jaw-dropping - perfect timing, keen humor, and seemingly infinite vocal inflections to reflect her character's myriad mood swings and personality disorders.  She can be the sweet, innocent warbler one moment and a brassy, obnoxious loudmouth the next.  She's the quintessential trauma queen, even on her deathbed she contemplates the optimal cause of death: "I did consider being eaten by a tiger/Or being mauled by a bear/ But unfortunately that might muss my hair."  Meanwhile, West surrounds his starlet with sophisticated arrangements featuring splattery trombones, old world accordions, and jazzy nightclub pianos.  At one point Freeman suggested that a particular arrangement needed a toy piano, which, surprisingly, he wholeheartedly endorsed.  Interestingly, after this recording was released, Freeman and a pal wrote a play, Luna Tart Died of a Broken Heart, which was easy, due to the highly visual and interpretative nature of the music.  Since then the play has been performed around Austin and there are hopes of it venturing beyond Texas' capital city.

The Wimberley Village Library kicked off its summer reading program - Not only did the children in attendance get a chance to take advantage of those actvities, they also got a special treat when singer/songwriter Laura Freeman and puppeteer Heather Jarry performed "Green Kid Saves the World" for a nearly packed house. The interactive show taught kids about renewable energy, clean water, composting and many more Earth-friendly activities they can take part in on a daily basis. Characters such as the "Compost Heap " elicited big laughs, while the kids got to help Green Kid on his mission with songs and activiites.