Ann Hampton Callaway
‘Finding Beauty, Vol. 1’
Shanachie Records

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the first great “secular prayer” songs were “Imagine” (1971) by John Lennon — with considerable help from his wife, Yoko Ono — and, five years earlier, “Someday at Christmas,” from the Stevie Wonder songbook, by Ron Miller and Bryan Wells. 

This specific category is elusive. “Imagine” is a hymn that makes a point to disavow religion, and “Someday at Christmas” is a Yuletide anthem of love and peace that doesn’t mention either Santa Claus or Jesus. “What a Wonderful World,” written for Louis Armstrong in 1967, is also a contender.

There are others, but the most moving I’ve heard this Christmas season is “At the Same Time,” written by Ann Hampton Callaway, which was first recorded by Barbara Streisand on her 1997 album “Higher Ground.”   

Ms. Callaway wrote the music and lyrics to “At The Same Time” in 1987, 10 years before Ms. Streisand’s album, and I’ve heard her sing it many times. It was a highlight of “Yuletide Revelry,” the Christmas show that Ms. Callaway performed over the last week at 54 Below in tandem with her younger sister, the multi-talented musical theater singer, Liz Callaway.   

Yet the composer has never included “At The Same Time” on any of her own albums until now. She’s released a wide range of thematic projects, including laudable explorations of the songbooks of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Peggy Lee, but evidently she’s been saving up her original songs in order to build an entire album around them, which she has just released, called “Finding Beauty, Vol. 1.”  

As I recently wrote about the late Nora York and Abbey Lincoln, one thing that Ms. Callaway has in common with these other unique songwriters is that even though all three are loosely classified as jazz artists, they were never limited to any one category in terms of the songs that they wrote. (Alas, “Finding Beauty, Vol. 1” resembles a pop album in another unfortunate aspect: The overall audio mix is notably overprocessed. For the best sonic experience, I recommend listening on headphones rather than speakers.) 

Some of the songs on “Finding Beauty” are in a jazz groove. In addition, at least two guest stars here are jazz luminaries, Kurt Elling on “Love And Let Love” and Tierney Sutton on “You Can’t Rush Spring.” Still, “Love And Let Love” is one of the funkier tunes here, opening with a bass vamp that sounds straight out of Motown. “Spring” has a haunting harmony between the two female voices, which suggests that the idea of spring is being teased out, slowly extracted, rather than rushed. 

The presence of Mr. Elling and Ms. Sutton is a tipoff that “Finding Beauty” is a vast tapestry of songs in which Ms. Callaway has written music or lyrics, often both, but equally frequently with a wide range of collaborators.  “Information Please,” based on a true tale of technology and tenderness — a little boy who becomes attached to a telephone operator — was co-written with Amanda McBroom, and “New Eyes” with Melissa Manchester. “Revelation” is the composer’s setting of a classic poem by Robert Frost. “Forever and a Day” has lyrics by one of the great living songwriters, Alan Bergman, who turned 98 a few months ago, on a subject that he writes about better than anyone: everlasting, eternal love.

“Wherever You Are,” a sublime duet with Liz Callaway, is a stunning memorial to a friend who died of AIDS in the early 1990s. The album’s title — which, coincidentally, has already served as the title of an album recorded in tribute to Ann Hampton Callaway by the cabaret singer Josephine Sanges — is a highly moving dedication to her wife, Kari Strand.

Still, for me, the main event is “At the Same Time.” “Imagine” suggests that people only need the notion of god and heaven because these ideas help to slow us down, at least, in our rampant destruction of each other.  “Someday at Christmas” implies that the holiday itself — whether approached from a spiritual or a secular perspective — should at least be a cue to work toward ending war and poverty. Likewise, “Peace on Earth,” by Ian Fraser, Larry Grossman (he of “The Muppet Show” theme), and Buz Kohan, half of an iconic medley by Bing Crosby and David Bowie, suggests much the same thing, but without reference to any aspect of Christmas.

“At The Same Time” draws on all these ideas while being very much its own animal. “Think of all the hearts beating in the world at the same time. / Think of all the faces telling stories of our lives at the same time.” In her introduction to the song, Ms. Callaway relates how Ms. Streisand wanted the text to be “simple but profound,” a difficult task, but one that song lyrics are uniquely suited to.  

The song tells us that everyone in the world wants the same thing, to see their children grow up safely, that we all smile when we’re happy and cry when we’re sad. The point is that we are all more alike than we are different, and that all our hearts are beating at the same time. “Think of all the hands that will be reaching for a dream, / And think of all the dreams that could come true.”  

Some of the songs here are bittersweet and melancholy, but none are truly downers. She suggests that there is “hope for all the hearts beating in the world,” and she hears “a healing music in our hearts.” Maybe someday at Christmas, all the leaders of the world will hear that music and respond to it, and then beauty will truly be found.