ARTISTS CONTINUE NYRO'S LEGACY WITH TRIBUTE ALBUM.

Byline: Jim Bessman Billboard

What began as a loving tribute to the music of Laura Nyro has sadly become a living memorial to an artist who inspired so many succeeding female singer/songwriters and whose passing last month was deeply felt by so many others.

``Time and Love - The Music of Laura Nyro'' features covers of Nyro's songs by Phoebe Snow, Rosanne Cash, Jonatha Brooke, Patty Larkin, Jill Sobule, Suzanne Vega, Beth Nielsen Chapman, the Roches, Lisa Germano, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Dana Bryant, Holly Cole and Leni Stern, along with Jane Siberry's ``When I Think of Laura Nyro,'' a collection of several Nyro song hooks that Siberry strung together when she couldn't settle on a single song to cover.

The album originally had been scheduled for a June 10 release on Profile Entertainment's Astor Place. Nyro, who had been out of the public eye in the two years prior to her death, had voiced willingness to support the project with select interviews and an appearance at a proposed concert featuring its artists.

Now, with interest in the influential New York singer/songwriter's work heightened, Astor Place has moved up the release of the album to Tuesday, and plans are under way for a memorial concert to include Nyro-inspired artists as well.

The concept for the Nyro tribute, notes Profile president Steve Plotnicki, fits in with an Astor Place goal of freshly interpreting contemporary songwriter material. Plotnicki, a Nyro fan since he was a teen, and executive producer Peter Gallway sought contemporary female artists - established and new - covering all genres.

``Since she was one of the first feminist pop artists, we thought it would be appropriate and interesting to have women artists honor her music,'' said Gallway, who earlier had produced ``works in progress'' for Nyro that haven't been released. ``So, there's alternative country, contemporary acoustic, pop, jazz with Leni, spoken word with Dana. Not everyone knew her music, but they're all carrying on her torch.''

Nyro's ``Eli's Coming'' allowed Germano to create ``something mysterious, because I didn't know who Eli was,'' she said. ``So I had a ball trying to make an eerie rendition of the song and trying to take it completely opposite and different from Three Dog Night's (hit) version.''

Vega, among those artists who were heavily influenced by Nyro, said she chose to redo ``Buy and Sell'' because it was a song she sang in college while attending a musical theater course.

``I don't usually buy tribute albums and figure that if you want to listen to Laura Nyro's songs, listen to Nyro do them!'' she said. ``But she really wrote about the New York where I lived and grew up - and the inner world as well, which I'd never heard any other person do. So I'm very pleased to be part of the album.''

The project brought back together fellow New Yorkers the Roches, who have been temporarily on hiatus.

``She was such a soulful musician and had all these amazing harmony parts,'' said Suzzy Roche. ``We did `Wedding Bell Blues,' which I remember from my childhood as a Fifth Dimension hit, and it was so much fun to do. She was such an incredible artist.''

Says Phoebe Snow, who performs the tribute's title track, ``Thank God she left such a storehouse of ways to know her. Her music and her whole consciousness impacted on women in the industry today, and what a voice! It cut through you like a knife.''

Snow was leaving for Los Angeles to promote the ``Time and Love'' album on a radio show when Nyro's death was reported.

``The host let me be a guest DJ for a few minutes, and I played `Captain for the Dark Mornings' - my favorite Laura song going back to when I was a kid - and everyone there, who were too young to remember, were so deeply affected and asked who she was,'' Snow said.

To further promote ``Time and Love'' - and celebrate the life and music of Nyro - a Nyro memorial concert is tentatively scheduled for June 6 in New York, to benefit Gilda's Club, the support community for cancer patients named for Gilda Radner. Performers will include the tribute album's participants as well as other musicians who performed with Nyro or were influenced by her.