Singers with Unique Voices: Amber Gray (The Unique Voices Club #17)

Every Friday, I write a post about singers with unique voices not commonly heard in mainstream music in an effort to educate emerging artists and music lovers and inspire them to embrace their own quirks. This week I'm writing on Amber Gray.

Photo by Matthew Murphy

Since I work in the musical theatre world, I figured it was high time to add someone who performed on Broadway to the lineup of The Unique Voices Club. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Amber Gray. If you know Hadestown and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, then you should know her, because she starred in both. And I'm not going to give away the plots, but for someone who is trapped in the Underworld and only let out once a year, she sure brings a level of sass and ferocity that you wouldn't normally expect from someone in that situation. Even if she is legitimately going crazy being starved of sunlight and escaping into the bottle which is part of it.

While I've seen both shows but not versions that have her in them, I'm limited to cast recordings instead. Rachel Syme, who wrote on her for the New Yorker in 2019, says that throughout her performance in Hadestown "she stomps, she slithers, she glides with a silvery liquidness that makes her seem both young and ancient at once." Her raspy voice presents the same agility, sliding between soft and playful and punching you in the face with the occasional growl. The actress may only be in her forties right now, but her voice sounds like it comes from another time, reminiscent of one of her idols, Eartha Kitt. One of my college major-mates suggested I listen to the Hadestown soundtrack when I told him I wanted to write a folk musical at some point, and when I did, I had shivers all over my body after listening to the songs Amber led.

The comparison to Eartha makes me immediately think of when she played the role of Yzma in The Emperor's New Groove. The song from a 1956 album "I Wanna Be Evil" probably tipped producers off that she's be great at playing a villain. I'd love to see Amber Gray play an actual villain on the same level of Yzma that literally wants to destroy the world, but her character in The Great Comet, Hélène Bezukhova, was an unfaithful one to her husband. In addition to relishing the scandal of Natasha Rostova being with her married brother. In this case though, besides the villainy, you can hear all the suggestiveness and flirtations in her solo "Charming."

Amber Gray also appears in the Lin-Manuel Miranda concept album The Warriors, based on the book, and also the Daniel Emond folk/hip-hop opera concept album Kill the Whale, situated in the same universe as Moby Dick. Her malleable voice portrays the toughness that being in a Bronx gang would create, and the hauntingness of being at sea and trying to hunt whales. Some of the musical theatre voices that I know of come from classically trained backgrounds, and while it sounds like Amber's voice has a jazzy undertone (she wasn't trained in musical theatre at all actually, and still won a Tony), there are still very few musical theatre singers with unique voices. There are a few that I've found that I will write about later, but if you, dear reader, discover some from this and other genres, you have the privilege to suggest them with a Patreon subscription. You already know from reading this blog how much I love unique singing voices. And hopefully in reading about an artist from the theatrical realm, another theatre nerd out there will be inspired to still continue on their craft in these trying times.

Me as Sarah Parker Remond for my debut This is Not a Bill, produced when I was still in college. So if I can do it, you can too.

And that is all for this week in the Unique Voices Club! Don't forget to share these posts with your inner circle or someone who lacks the confidence to create art the way they want. And maybe follow me on social media. There's power in the unconventional!

Stay educated,

Alexia