Lucy Simon Dies: Broadway ’Secret Garden’ Composer, Sister Of Carly Simon Was 82
Lucy Simon, the Tony Award-nominated composer of Broadway’s 1991 musical The Secret Garden and sister of singer Carly Simon, died of breast cancer Thursday at her home in Piedmont, New York. She was 82.
Born into wealth and a rarified atmosphere of celebrity and literati as the second of four children to Simon & Schuster publisher Richard Simon and wife Andrea, Simon would enter show business herself in the early 1960s when she and younger sister Carly formed the folk singing duo The Simon Sisters, performing in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and New York City’s Greenwich Village. In 1964, the sisters recorded and released the song “Wynken, Blynken & Nod” to moderate success.
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Within 10 years Carly Simon would become one of pop music’s most successful and commercially viable of the era’s singer-songrwriters, with hits including “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” and “Anticipation” in 1971, and, the following year, her smash signature tune “You’re So Vain,” which endures on classic pop radio and as an object of debate over the mystery man of the lyrics.
Lucy Simon, although attending nursing school in the late 1960s, would continue a musical career, albeit one of a lesser profile than her younger sister’s. In 1975 she recorded the album Lucy Simon and in 1977 Stolen Time, that latter featuring backup vocals by Carly and then-husband James Taylor on about half of the songs.
In the early ’80s, Simon and husband David Levine produced two children’s albums that would win Grammy Awards: In Harmony: A Sesame Street Record in 1981 and Harmony 2 in 1983.
Simon’s breakthrough success came in 1991 when she served as composer of the Broadway musical The Secret Garden, garnering a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score. The acclaimed production would go on to win Tonys for book, scenic design and young Daisy Eagan’s featured performance. The cast also included Mandy Patinkin, Rebecca Luker, Robert Westenberg and John Cameron Mitchell.
Following up on the success of The Secret Garden, Simon composed music for a stage adaptation of Doctor Zhivago, which debuted at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse in 2006. The musical had a brief run on Broadway in 2015.
In 1993, Simon wrote and produced music for the HBO film The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom.
Prior to the progression of her illness, Simon had been working with Susan Birkenhead and Emily Maan on On Cedar Street, a musical adaptation of the 2015 novel Our Souls At Night and 2017 Netflix film. The project is ongoing.
Simon is survived by husband Dr. David Y Levine, daughter Julie Simon, son James Levine, sister Carly Simon, and four grandchildren.
In a Facebook message posted just days before her mother’s death, Julie Simon wrote, “In these days at my mother’s bedside, I find myself obsessed with ‘last times’ – the last time she could walk, the last time she could write, the last voice message I got from her. I am trying to live in the moments she has now and the moments I will carry with me – endless, suspended… like our voices entwined with one another.”
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