Ann Hampton Callaway is sure to be spending more time in Westchester.

On Saturday night, she and a trio will be half of Purchase College Performing Arts Center’s unique split-bill gala with Itzhak Perlman. Audiences for both shows will party together and then split up to see either the violin virtuoso or the cabaret great.

In the spring, she’ll go solo at the intimate Emelin Theatre, accompanying herself on the piano.
Consider it her way of getting to know her new neighbors. After living in Manhattan for seven years, Callaway is moving back to Croton-on-Hudson.

“Yes, I’m about to become a Westchester resident again,� she says. “Barbecues, late-night drinks, baking cookies at Christmastime, harassing my nephew.� (Her sister, Liz, lives in Croton with her husband, director Dan Foster, and their son, Nick.)

I love living in New York City, but space, nature and peace called and I answered,� she says. “It’s very exciting to be coming back.�

Not that she spends a lot of time at home: “A lot of travel, a lot of gigs, a lot of cities,� she says.

Callaway may be best known for singing the theme to “The Nanny� on TV, but if you just know her for that, it’s like knowing Sinatra only for “My Way� or Elvis only for “Blue Suede Shoes.� There’s much more to Ann Hampton Callaway than “The Nanny� theme.

For starters, she sings the heck out of a song.

Listen to her rendition of “Blue Moon� on her 2006 CD “Blues in the Night,� and you’ll never hear the song the same way again. She holds notes longer, sings them purer and phrases lines better than a person has a right to.

Callaway also plays the piano, even though piano great George Shearing encouraged her to step out from behind the ivories to stand front-and-center and sing.

She composes.

For the past few months, she’s been getting ready to record a CD of “heavily Ann Hampton Callaway material� for Telarc in December.

“The kinds of songs I’ve been writing are anywhere from beautiful lush love songs to kind of fun — I wrote a new song called ‘Don’t Save Your Kisses Like Fine China,’ that I’ll be doing in some of my shows in Westchester this autumn.�

She also has a great sense of humor, which you’ll hear in her lyrics.

Asked what an Ann Hampton Callaway song sounds like, she doesn’t miss a beat, saying: “If Moms Mabley and Fred Astaire had a child, this is what their child would have written. I am a contradiction, with green eyes.�
Check out the lyrics to her “I’m-Too-White-To-Sing-the-Blues Blues�:

“Disregard the name
Ann Hampton Callaway.
English, Scottish, Irish:
A honky all the way.
Lionel wasn’t pappy;
Neither was ol’ Cab.
Every day I curse the way
My life is dull and drab.
Go on and spread the news:
I’ve got the I’m-Too-White-To-Sing-the-Blues Blues�

The “too-white� thing was born of the fact that Callaway is a scat singer of the first degree, from the Ella Fitzgerald class.

“When you’re scatting, you’re making up stuff as you go along. However, when you’re scatting with someone else — for instance, I have arrangements I’ve done with my sister, Liz — I remember distinctly, on a Metro-North train, a scatting argument we had. I was writing on the scat solo and Liz was saying ‘Why does it have to be “dwee-ba�? Why can’t it be “da-ba�?’�

Sisters.

When she was in the Broadway show “Swing!� — for which she was a 2000 Tony nominee and a Theater World Award winner — Callaway had to write down the scat lines because everyone had to sing the same syllable.

“It was very funny to try to write scat, which for me is always a very spontaneous thing.�

When she’s on her own, she says the scats just flow, which keeps the mood in the hall kinetic and electric.

“If I want to keep myself interested, I try to keep it as loose as possible. It’s fun for me to keep my musicians amused by being fresh and spontaneous.�

“I like to let the moment guide me. That’s how I live my entire life. It’s how I cook,� she says. “It’s how I do everything.�

“I’ll make up a soup and I’ll make up whatever I have and I’ll throw something together. The problem is that when you make an improvisational dish, you can never duplicate it. If it’s great, it’s the only time you’ll ever have it.�

Of course, having your sister in the neighborhood means you can always pop over to borrow an ingredient or two.