The best of the bunch is Lauren Kennedy's Here and Now, a marvelous collection of show music and "In This Room" and Adam Guettel's "Through the Mountain" (from Floyd Collins). Kennedy's voice is so vibrant - at times so Streisandian - it's irresistible.
- Chad Jones - InsideBayArea.com
Broadway star Lauren Kennedy isn't interested in a run-of-the-mill CD of classic showtunes. Instead, she turns to the Great White Way's newer voices, such as David Yazbek, former Michiganian Andrew Lippa and Georgia Stitt. The result is a collection just about anyone can like, often with more modern pop-friendly arrangements that would fit right in on the radio. Lippa's "Spread a Little Joy" is an infectious tune, and Stitt's "My Lifelong Love" has a wistful appeal. New parents will identify with Dan Lipton's "You'll Want Me to Shine". Kennedy herself shines brightly on this CD.
- Eric Henrickson, Detroit News
Lauren Kennedy is a major supporter and admirer of this current generation of songwriters, and I'm sure the feeling is mutual. She has an innate understanding of the material she chooses, and blends a conventional Broadway style with contemporary wit and pop influence, making her an ideal fit with these songs.
- Randy Rainbow
Now take Lauren Kennedy. She can make you schoolboyishly or girlishly laugh along with Jason Robert Brown's
rollicking "Mr. Hopalong Heartbreak", and, on the next track, redeem Frank Wildhorn and Jack Murphy's simplistic
"Easy" by conjuring up the sincerest sentiment of your never-forgotten first love.
Next, she offers the clever Marcy Heisler-Zina Goldrich tango, "Apathetic Man", adorable ingenuousness
growing up before our very ears into cynical resignation as Kennedy bittersweetly laments: "Is there anything more sexy
than an apathetic man ... any drug more potent than an apathetic man?"
And, on track twelve, what a rousing hymn to feminine liberation in the Jeff Blumenkrantz-Libby Saines "I'm Free",
brilliantly proclaiming a young woman's emancipation in body and soul.
- John Simon, Broadway.com
She is a bubbly blonde, brimming with an adorable personality that makes her audience love her as soon as she steps out onstage. She began by saying that she wanted the night to be all about the music, and you could really tell how much she loves music and sharing it with a group of people. Whatever the style, Kennedy is always passionate and connected to the music in a very real way. Her voice is a high, pure belt, which is both sweet and powerful, and shows the emotion behind whatever she is singing.
- Stacy Matlin, Cabaret Exchange
Raleigh, NC's own Broadway star Lauren Kennedy showcased her impressive vocal and comic talents, and her remarkable versatility as a song stylist. Kennedy ... is a vivacious vocalist with a big Broadway voice and a charismatic performer whether stroking a lyric until it purrs or putting just the right spin on a punch line.
- Robert W. McDowell, The Classical Voice
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