Karen Young, Coral Egan share their dreams
Karen Young and Coral Egan, who share a passion for music, take their partnership to the next level with a new album. Dreamers is a delight, T’Cha Dunlevy writes.
It started with a sold-out show at last year’s Montreal International Jazz Festival. Truth be told, it started long before that, but when Karen Young and Coral Egan took the stage at L’Astral, and their voices took flight, there was no turning back.
The mother-daughter duo has shared a passion for music since Egan was an infant, but preparing and performing their first major full-on show as a pair established a creative partnership that begins a new chapter with the launch of their collaborative debut album Dreamers, Thursday at Cabaret Lion d’Or.
The experience has been revelatory for both Young, a veteran jazz and world music artist whose career dates back decades, and Egan, whose repertoire leans more toward pop and soul, and who, at the beginning of last year, had just come back from a battle with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare auto-immune disorder.
“It’s been an incredibly fun process,” Egan said, sitting with her mom in a Villeray Café last week. “Originally, when we decided to do (the album), after the jazz fest gig, people were like, ‘You should really tour this.’ And to tour, you need an album. From that moment, we decided to call it Project No Stress.
“The show reminded us that singing together makes this job so much easier. Neither of us has to lead — we both lead, and we get to share the space. It becomes less about what our voices sound like individually and becomes about the sound (of the two of us). We sing together so naturally because it’s not just about you, which is such a relief.”
Dreamers is a delight. The globetrotting, stylistically voracious collection of duets is a tribute to the pair’s varied influences, from the breezy Quantas Voltas Dá Meu Mundo, by Brazil’s Djavan; to the mischievously twisted Somebody, by late American jazz saxophonist Steve Lacy; Valser en mi Bémol, by Quebec’s Catherine Major; classical great Benjamin Britten’s Corpus Christi; and Turkish treat Ben Seni Sevdugumi, by the late Kazim Koyuncu.
“We chose songs we really like to sing, and that are an adventure to harmonize to,” Young said, as the Beach Boys played over the café’s PA system. “We’ve both been harmonizing all our lives, so we both have the habit. When we listen to music, we harmonize.
“We’re always looking for that part that doesn’t exist,” Egan said.
“Anything but the melody,” Young continued. “We actually had to fight over who was going to get to do the harmony.”
“It depends on the tunes,” Egan said. “People think working with parents or family can have a lot of conflict, but it was the opposite. She’s always been permissive of my enormous ego — my presence, musically, and how much space I can take as a person. She’s not just permissive but she wants me to be me.” “That’s the mother thing.” “Not everyone, that’s you, mother.”
There are good vibes to spare between this pair, and never a
dull moment as the two finish each other’s sentences and riff off one another, in conversation as in song.
The encouragement goes both ways, Young insisted, explaining how working with her daughter has given her a boost as she eases into a new phase in her career.
“I feel very supported by her,” she said. “My voice is changing. (I’ve been wondering,) ‘Am I too old?’ I’m having to go through change, but when singing with Coral, everything relaxes and I sing much better. It’s funny.”
“We’ve realized that the sum of the two of us makes our job a lot easier,” Egan said.
The album also finds them performing two songs by Young, including a rendition of Les oies, her interpretation of a poem by Quebec legend Gilles Vigneault, from her 2003 album La couleur du vent; and two by Egan, beginning with a new song, Tongue Tied, written on the day Donald Trump was elected U.S. president.
“It’s kind of a protest song,” Egan explained. “I said, ‘OK, suck it up.’ ... It’s difficult, in our time; it’s not easy to assume (politics in music). But I took a chance.”
“It’s a battle between utopia and dystopia,” Young said. “It’s so easy for everyone to fall into a dystopian view. It seems almost innocent, or naive to be ...”
“A dreamer!” Egan interjected, with a nudge-wink reference to their album title.
Tongue Tied is part of the creative percolation that is beginning for Egan’s next solo album, which, she hinted, may continue in the folk vein. Young, on her end, has put off until next year plans for a Joni Mitchell tribute album, with jazz pianist Marianne Trudel.
For the moment, mother and daughter have business to attend to.
“It’s not now or never,” Egan said. “But I’m really happy it’s now.”