PREMIERE – Lucy Thomas (Cavendish Records)
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
One of the great joys of reviewing stage school musicals and competitions such as the Sondheim Society’s Student Performer of the Year is the thrill of spotting a future star at the beginning of his or her journey and being able to say “You heard it here first!”
Lucy Thomas hasn’t even reached the student stage yet, she’s still at school and was only 14 when she recorded Premiere, a collection of famous covers from film and stage musicals plus four tracks from the yet-to-be-seen Rosie, written by Chris Broom who has co-produced this stunning album.
A little lass from Wigan who has loved singing in public from the age of seven, she knocks hits like ‘Defying Gravity’ from Wicked, ‘Never Enough’ from The Greatest Showman, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Someone Like You’ from Jekyll and Hyde out of the park with a voice of purity, perfect clarity and surprising power.
And Broom’s songs for Rosie, particularly ‘Starlight’ and ‘The Day That I Met You’, in no way look out of place beside the hit compositions of Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz, Leslie Bricusse and Pasek and Paul.
If they are typical of the show, Rosie should be worth going a long way to see. Broom’s music, still in development, tells the true story of Rosie Boote, rejected and dumped into an Irish convent as a child, who dreams of fame as an actress and becomes the toast of Edwardian theatreland as a Gaiety Girl before eloping with an aristocratic cavalry officer, much to high-society disapproval.
Broom’s plan is to make an original studio cast album of the show with Lucy as Rosie prior to launching her and his musical on to the stage.
On this collection, he and co-producer Phil Bulleyment have given Lucy a lush strings backing of 11 violins, four viola, three cello and double bass, along with piano, harp and woodwind, and she has the maturity of voice that merits such lavish treatment.
Lucy, recently turned 15, has already been called “the real deal” by judge will.i.am when she appeared on the junior version of The Voice and who am I to argue with such a pop legend?
It’s a delightful debut, rich in promise, and I can also recommend Lucy’s single from Waitress, the wonderful ‘This Used To Be Mine’, which shows she can do soulful with the best. Simply put, the sky’s the limit. As they say, watch this space.
Jeremy Chapman
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