LIFE-CHANGING INSPIRATION
Singer determined the musical direction she would take aboard a Coast Guard icebreaker
You can never predict when or where creative inspiration will strike.
For jazz singer Emilie-Claire Barlow, the catalyst to her latest recording Clear Day was “an extraordinary life-changing experience” sailing through Canada’s Northwest Passage back in 2011. It started a chain of events that now finds the award-winning artist with a fresh outlook on life, splitting her time between Montreal and Mexico.
“The album wound up being kind of a chronological journal covering a four-year period of my life,” Barlow explains. “The starting point was a week I spent on the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen in August of 2011. It was totally outside of my comfort zone, a day-today experience in a remote, isolated place, and allowed me the opportunity to reflect on the path I was on and what direction I wanted to take in my life and music.”
A series of personal events found Barlow leaving her marriage and starting to travel more.
“In reflecting on that time later on, I thought about the over-riding emotions behind those turning points or pivotal moments, whether it was discovery or dreaming, feeling trapped or feeling like a change had to come. As I conceptualized that, I chose the repertoire that could tell the story.”
Some ways in, the scope of the story suggested marshaling some larger musical forces.
“I wanted access to all sorts of sound colours, so I hired an orchestra.”
Not just any orchestra. Barlow made inquiries with Metropole Orkest, the Grammy-winning jazz orchestra based in Hilversum, the Netherlands, famous for recordings with Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello, John Scofield and others. In the meantime, she was beginning a new collaboration with arranger Steve Webster, her partner in life and music, around his home in Mexico.
“To do this right I wanted lots and lots of room and time to do the creative work, so that led to my first long stretch in Mexico. It’s so vibrant and colourful, just a very, very inspiring place to be.”
Between them, Barlow and Webster picked tracks that pushed the already broad boundaries of her pop-jazz career wider still, from standards like On a Clear Day and Midnight Sun, to Lennon and McCartney’s Because, Simon & Garfunkel’s Feelin’ Groovy and Joni Mitchell’s I Don’t Know Where I Stand, with Queen’s Under Pressure and Coldplay’s Fix You among others.
“I didn’t limit myself to any particular genre or era. It was all about what could tell the story most accurately. It unfolded from there.”
They penned most of the arrangements, commissioned others from John Metcalf (who worked on Gabriel’s Metropole collaboration), and wrote lyrics to a couple of instrumentals by Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau.
And then an expanded 70-piece version of Orkest Metropole with conductor Jules Buckley put in four long sessions.
Some of the charts were pretty complex — setting up a challenge for the singer and the orchestra — but it paid off. Barlow’s considerable gifts rose to the occasion and several trio tracks were added to fill out the disc. It’s not by chance that Clear Day won the 2016 Juno Award for best vocal jazz album (her second Juno) and some welldeserved critical acclaim.
Much of the material will be on the program when the singer performs a special date next week with a 17-piece version of the Edmonton Jazz Orchestra and director Kent Sangster, adapting her arrangements and adding extra repertoire from previous albums with an opening trio set including her bassist Jon Maharaj and pianist Amanda Tosoff.
One intriguing side to Barlow’s story is that she’s less interested in writing original songs. She helped pioneer the trend of searching out new standards to sing to new generations of listeners.
“I find that process fascinating and very creatively rewarding, taking a song and deconstructing it, figuring out what it’s all about at the core, and what makes it so beloved. I try to re-imagine it in a way that stays true to the intention of the song, but maybe makes people hear something they haven’t heard before. I like the element of discovery, of seeing how far you can push a song and keep it true, and I like watching the faces in the audience when that light bulb of recognition goes off.”
Barlow was fated to make a life in music. The Toronto native is the child of professional musicians (her dad is jazz drummer Brian Barlow and her mother is composer-singer Judy Tate).
She first found herself in recording studios at age seven, helping to voice a commercial with her mother, and she maintains a parallel career in voicing work that includes commercials and animation like Sailor Moon.
Along the way, she attended a performing arts high school, gaining stage experience in acting and dancing, before she went on to study jazz theory and arranging at Toronto’s Humber College.
She made her recording debut in 1998, but the album that really took Barlow’s career to a new level was The Beat Goes On in 2010. That unprecedented set of “re-imagined” pop-jazz covers included the Sonny & Cher title track translated into a bossa nova number alongside other 1960s era hits like These Boots Were Made for Walkin’ and Sunshine Superman. Now her collective discography has sold well over 100,000 units collectively, an impressive level in jazz.
Barlow is edging toward more original material, including two completely original songs on an upcoming Christmas album she’s making for release later this year.
Either way, the goal is to keep things interesting.
“That’s what Clear Day was about, pushing myself as an artist and a singer and musician, challenging myself to find my limits . ... There’s a sound you get when you push people to their limits. You have to stretch your instrument to find its emotional range.”
Barlow’s date with the Edmonton Jazz Orchestra’s Spring Spectacular aids fundraising for the Edmonton Jazz Festival Society and benefits jazz workshops and education projects. For full details see edmontonjazz.com.