Redefining what it means to sing jazz
NEW ALBUM: Producer urged Andrea Superstein to colour recordings with her quirkiness
Andrea Superstein calls herself a jazz singer but her second album, What Goes On, calls into question what constitutes a jazz singer today.
It’s an album with her interpretations of songs by Radiohead, Keene and Shocking Blue, three of her own songs, plus one hoary pop standard, I Love Paris, whose ambivalence doesn’t make it sound like she loves Paris at all.
The playfulness of After You’ve Gone mingles with the bluesy Venus and the imaginative spin on Karma Police all add up to anything but what conventionally is thought of as jazz.
So what is a modern jazz singer?
“I’m not sure I have an answer for that,” she replies. “I definitely came up in the jazz scene. If you listen to my first album (One Night), it’s more straight ahead.”
Born in Montreal, raised in Vancouver and promoted by the Coastal Jazz & Blues Society, Superstein has jazz credentials, but was eager to try something different with her second album. But what? As she recounts in her notes for What Goes On, she heard a track on CBC Radio by Meaghan Smith that encapsulated her feelings about jazz and indie music. Produced by Les Cooper, who also produced the diverse Jill Barber, Smith showed her the merger she was seeking was possible. Superstein contacted Cooper, flew to Toronto to meet him and to record.
“I really wanted to pass everything off to Les,” Superstein says. “That was a big week for me.
“We didn’t talk too much about the arrangements. The reason I wanted to work with Les is that he’d produced records that I really admired.
“Over the years, he’s been embraced by the jazz scene, but still had that indie vibe. I knew right away that Les understood my musicianship. It felt so right. We were on the same page.”
Cooper gave her the freedom to make the album she imagined and to let her irreverence, most evident on the smile-inducing After You’ve Gone, to colour the album.
“That just came out. It’s an aspect of my personality. It was important to me have a balance. I’m a bit of a quirky person and there is a bit of that quirkiness on the record.
“These are songs I just love,” she adds. “I respect those songs and bands so much. I had to find a way that paid homage to them while putting my own stamp on it.”
The experience (or experiment) has given her a range that redefines jazz in a way that audiences appreciate as well as emboldening her to go further.
“I hope so,” Superstein says. “I want to think about music in new ways. I want to keep evolving. I’m excited by the way we’re going.”