Remember
the first time you heard Streisand or Renée Fleming, Celine Dion or Adele? Yes,
the voice was arrestingly beautiful, but there was more: a distinctiveness that
made that moment of discovery uniquely thrilling. Each is blessed with “that
little something extra,” as James Mason so aptly described it to Judy Garland
in “A Star Is Born,” that signifies true star quality.
Hit
“play” on track one of Speak Low, the debut release from classically-trained
mezzo-soprano Patrice Jégou, and you immediately feel that same effect; that
ineffable je ne sais quoi that separates the great from the merely good. Across
15 wide-ranging tracks, spanning Broadway, Nashville and beyond, and blurring
jazz, pop, classical, country and gospel, Jegou is assisted by an all-star
assortment of musicians, including Take 6, gospel superstar Andrae Crouch,
saxophonist Kirk Whalum, bassists Victor Wooten and David Finck, drummer Shawn
Pelton, and guitarist Paul Jackson Jr., with production credits that include
Take 6’s Mark Kibble and the Manhattan Transfer’s Cheryl Bentyne.
The
story of Jégou’s serpentine career path, including the evolution of Speak Low, is as compelling as
the album itself. Born in the Newfoundland capital of St. John’s but raised on
the opposite side of Canada, in Red Deer, Alberta (the province’s third biggest
metropolis, a prosperous oil-and-cattle town located equidistant between
Calgary and Edmonton), Jégou grew up in a house filled with music—her mother
was an amateur guitarist, keyboardist and vocalist. At her mother’s insistence,
she begrudgingly took piano lessons, but was much more interested in sports. A
natural athlete, she excelled at baseball, volleyball and particularly ice
skating.
Eager to
expand her horizons beyond Red Deer, Jégou began skating professionally,
coaching in New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, and touring Mexico with
an ice show. But at age 23 she decided to hang up her skates. The show she was
appearing in had reached Monterrey, and there was a cast change. Among the
newcomers was a fellow from Vancouver with an impressive background in musical
theater. One day, while the cast was fooling around during intermission,
singing various tunes, he took special note of Jegou’s voice and urged her to
take singing lessons.
Intrigued,
Jégou returned to Red Deer and sought out a prominent local voice teacher—a nun
originally from Jamaica—and also enrolled at Red Deer College, where she joined
the jazz choir. From there, she progressed to the music program at the
University of Calgary. Two years into her studies, she decided two try out for
a soloist role in Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, being presented by the Calgary
Philharmonic under the direction of Maestro Hans Graf. Midway through her
audition, Graf stood up, dashed down the aisle, ran up on stage and said,
‘You’re so good! Sing it again,’ and began coaching her on the spot.
A short
while later, her voice teacher at U of C, who had studied with the celebrated
pedagogue Richard Miller, urged her to continue her education in the U.S. So, Jégou
found herself in Nashville, studying with Miller protégé Shirley Zelinksi at
Belmont University, acquiring her Masters in classical voice and ultimately
teaching there. Though eager to remain stateside, an application to extend her
work visa was rejected and Jégou found herself back in Alberta, teaching at the
University of Lethbridge. While she loved academia and savored working
one-on-one with gifted music students, she hungered to do her doctorate. An
internship through NATS (the National Association of Teachers of Singing) at
upstate New York’s SUNY Fredonia led to an opportunity to work with master
teacher Judith Nicosia at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where Jégou
completed her doctoral studies in 2011.
In the
summer of 2005, prior to relocating to New Jersey, Jégou entered and won a
prestigious international singing competition in Peru. Part of the prize was a
concert presented by ILAMS (the Iberian Latin American Music Society) in the
UK. The repertoire for the recital included Shostakovich, Brazilian tunes by
Ernani Braga, Argentinian folk songs by Ginastera, and black folk songs by
Montsalvatge. The following year, a Rutgers classmate, Spanish
multi-instrumentalist Cristina Pato (www.cristinapato.com)-who makes a most
unusual guest appearance on Speak Low – invited Jegou to join her in recording
that same eclectic repertoire.
Settled
in New Jersey, now studying for her doctorate at Rutgers University, she met
and married Yinka Oyelese, an accomplished physician, whose own musical
background includes membership in an immensely popular a cappella vocal group
in his native Nigeria. The spark for what would eventually become Speak Low,
executive produced by Oyelese, was ignited not long after their wedding, when,
in 2008, Jégou returned to the Peru competition to serve as an adjudicator.
While there, she was asked to give a master class and a recital.
Working
alongside a Costa Rican pianist, she remembers singing “a Schubert set, a
Debussy set and a Swedish song. But I thought I should also include something a
little more popular, so I prepared ‘Till There Was You’ from The Music Man, and
did it as an encore. Well, the audience applause was so enthusiastic that the
pianist leaned over and whispered to me, ‘Do you have another song?’ I
whispered back, ‘no,” and he said, ‘well you’ll have to sing it again,’ which I
did!”
A short
while later, a retirement party was being planned for Jégou and Oyelese’s
church minister and she was asked to sing. Again she chose “Till There Was
You,” and again the reaction was extraordinary. “People were cheering and
crying and were so excited by the song,” she recalls, “that Yinka turned to me
and said, ‘you know, honey, I think you should record a non-classical album.’”
Jégou proposed a living-room session using Apple’s GarageBand as the recording
software. Fortunately, Oyelese had a much grander vision.
Inspired
by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones’ Come Sunday and Kathleen Battle’s exquisite
work with pianist Cyrus Chestnut, they briefly considered doing an entire disc of
spirituals, but nixed the idea, since Patrice felt that an album of spirituals
by a white Canadian may not do well.
About the same time, jazz pianist Ted Labow, originally from Toronto,
whom Jégou had previously met while preparing her doctoral dissertation on the
music of Jewish-Canadian composer Irving Glick, entered the picture.
Patrice
and Yinka decided to do a very simple, voice-and-piano album, with Labow on the
piano, laying down five tracks at the famed Avatar Studios in NY: “Till There
Was You”, the traditional Irish folk song “Down by the Salley Gardens,” Michel
Legrand and Alan and Marilyn Bergman’s “The Summer Knows,” , the jazz standard
“Lullaby of the Leaves” and the Patsy Cline classic “Walkin’ After Midnight.”
Around
the same time, Jégou had developed a habit of casually singing “This Little
Light of Mine” around the house. Oyelese decided to capture it, with just Labow
and guitarist Thomas Guarnieri Jr. But the understated result, clocking in at
two-and-a-half minutes, wasn’t powerful enough. It would steadily grow, with
new layers continuously added, ultimately expanding to a five-and-a-half minute
showstopper.
Meanwhile,
Oyelese thought some of the Labow tracks needed strings. So, never shy about
seeking out the best help possible, he contacted the renowned Nashville String
Machine. Off to Nashville he and Jégou headed, to work with string arranger and
conductor Conni Ellisor to sweeten “Till There Was You,” “Down by the Salley
Gardens” (with a bagpipe solo by Pato subsequently added), “The Summer Knows”
and also record four new tracks with full orchestra: a second Legrand song,
“What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” “Speak Low,” an alternate
orchestral version of “The Summer Knows” and “What a Difference a Day Made,”
which, nodding to the song’s bolero origins, Jegou sings in both English and
Spanish. Labow also contributed his
talent in arranging the strings for “Lullaby of the Leaves,” and the Nicaraguan
folk song “Niño precioso”.
While in
Nashville, Oyelese decided it couldn’t hurt to round up some top local players
and add horns—trombone and trumpets—to “This Little Light of Mine”. Still, the
track wasn’t quite grand enough. So, he recalls, “I said to Patrice that the
greatest gospel choir on earth are the Andraé Crouch Singers, who did Michael
Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror”, so let’s see if we can get Crouch to add vocal
backing. I wrote to him, his manager wrote back asking for a demo of Patrice’s
voice, and then Andraé said he’d be happy to do it.” Ah, but the tinkering still
wasn’t complete. Yinka felt “This Little Light” needed an instrumental solo, so
he asked Grammy winning saxophonist Kirk Whalum to make a guest appearance.
Whalum, in turn, delivered a blistering saxophone solo.
At this
point, says Oyelese, “we were 90 percent of the way there, but it still wasn’t
good enough and we didn’t want to compromise in any way.” Calling in another
favor, he contacted his pal Mark Kibble from Take 6 and asked him to arrange
Irving Berlin’s “I’ve Got the Sun in the Morning” from Annie Get Your Gun.
Though Kibble wasn’t familiar with the song, he shaped a dazzling rendition,
featuring the entire Take 6 crew. Nor did he stop there. “Yinka is a good
friend,” he says, “and given Patrice’s background in classical music, I thought
[the project] would be a nice marriage of her classical training and the jazz
direction she wanted to go in. I like things that are slightly out of the norm
and present a challenge, and I thought I might be able to bring something
interesting to the table.”
He
thought right. Kibble also arranged and, with brother Joey, sings on “Don’t Sit
Under the Apple Tree,” a tune he’d first learned from an old Bugs Bunny
cartoon. “The song is so simple,” he says, “that the challenge is ‘where can
you take this?’ I knew we could blow it out and it would be a killer, and
Patrice just wore it out. I was amazed by what she was pulling off in the
studio!” Kibble then added vocal accompaniment to “Lullaby of the Leaves.” But
his crowning achievement is the finishing touches he added to “This Little
Light,” transforming it into a marvelous party. “Well,” he laughs, “I was a
little late to that party. It was the biggest challenge because of the way it
had grown. We had to put our thing in after it had already become pretty big; [but]
we rose to the occasion. It was just a matter of bringing out its true essence
as a gospel song. This was a whole new ball of wax for Patrice, so we had to
dig deep for the gospel roots. It became tremendous fun.”
“But,”
says Oyelese, “the story gets even more complicated.” Jégou decided to enter
the inaugural Sarah Vaughan Vocal Jazz Competition. For her demo she recorded
“From This Moment On” and “Every Day I Have the Blues.” Though she did not
reach the contest’s final rounds (despite having received the second highest
tally from the voting public in the preliminary round), she and Oyelese agreed
that both songs belonged on the album.
So back to Nashville they flew, re-recording the two tunes, the first
with a hard-swinging big band arrangement by renowned Nashville arranger Chris
McDonald, featuring trombonist Conrad Herwig and guitarist Vic Juris, and the
second with pianist Pat Coil (from Jegou’s first Nashville session), noted for
his work with Michael McDonald, Carmen McRae and Olivia Newton-John.
At last
the album was complete, though there is one additional chapter.
Prior to the
final Nashville date, Oyelese had suggested to Jégou that she get some guidance
from a non-classical coach. “I didn’t have any contacts in the popular music
world,” Jegou confesses, “but Yinka and I are big, big fans of the Manhattan
Transfer. So we contacted Cheryl Bentyne and sent her a demo. She was willing
to teach me, so Yinka arranged a mini-workshop with Cheryl in L.A. I’m telling
you, she really helped me; so much so, that, at her suggestion, we re-recorded
the lead vocals for “I Got the Sun In the Morning,” “Lullaby of the Leaves” and
“Walkin’ After Midnight” with her engineer, Tom McCauley.
Prior to
the final mastering, Jégou and Oyelese agreed it was paramount they keep total
control over the music. “I’d started my own label [Prairie Star Records] a year
ago,” says Jégou, “so we’ll keep it as a husband-and-wife DIY project and
release it on my label.” Ideally, though, they hope to partner with a larger
label, for assistance with marketing, promotion and distribution. “It has,”
says Oyelese, “been an incredible adventure. It wasn’t done from the viewpoint
of making money, but to perform music that Patrice and I love and want to
share. It is truly a labor of love.”
Tracklisting:
Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree
(With Anyone Else but Me) (feat. Joey Kibble & Mark Kibble)
What
Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?
From
This Moment On (feat. Conrad Herwig)
Everyday (I Have the Blues)
I've
Got the Sun in the Morning (feat.Take 6)
What
a Difference a Day Made
Lullaby of the Leaves (feat. Mark Kibble)
Down
by the Salley Gardens (feat. Cristina Pato)
Speak
Low (feat. The Lori Mechem Trio)
This
Little Light of Mine (feat. Kirk Whalum, Andraé Crouch and the Andraé Crouch
Singers, Joey Kibble & Mark Kibble)
Niño
Precioso
The
Summer Knows
Walking After Midnight
Til
There Was You
The
Summer Knows (Bonus Track).
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