The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Jazzmeia Horn with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra
Perth Concert Hall, November 22
Jazzmeia Horn always knew she would be a singer. Her grandmother, who loved jazz and played piano in the Southern Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, that Jazzmeia grew up in, made sure of it. Not only did her grandmother choose the name Jazzmeia, she also encouraged her granddaughter to sing, accompanying her at the piano, at every opportunity.
“My mother sang in the church choir, so it was expected that I would sing, too,” says Jazzmeia down the line from her home in New York. “I always loved singing but I never thought that I’d be singing around the world or at the Grammy awards. I mean, I used to dream about that but I never really imagined it would happen.”
Jazzmeia, who makes her Scottish debut this weekend with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, took the first steps to singing professionally by studying at the Booker T Washington
High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, the school attended by singers Norah Jones and Erykah Badu and the late trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
On graduating she moved to New York with no prospects, telling her family everything would be OK. Her success in two competitions helped to make things more than OK.
First, she entered – and won the Sarah Vaughan Vocal Jazz Competition. This gave her the confidence to try for the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, for which the first prize was a record deal.
She won and her first album, A Social Call, launched a new singing sensation, earning Jazzmeia a Grammy nomination and that spot at the Grammy awards ceremony.
“It’s amazing to go so far, so fast,” she says, although she hasn’t simply been handed her success.
She works intensely. On the day we speak, she has just enjoyed her first night off for months and all the time she is travelling with her band, she is writing songs, keeping notes for lyrics in one journal and ideas for melodies in another.
Her songwriting is superbly showcased on her second album, Love And Liberation, released a few weeks ago and featuring eight original songs alongside four covers including her take on Jon Hendricks’ No More, which mirrors her own philosophy on personal empowerment.
“I’m very careful about the songs I sing,” she says. “I have to believe what I’m singing, so I’m not going to sing anything I can’t relate to. That’s why I write a lot of my own material – to tell my story – but my songs also tell other people’s stories, about love, business, people, all the things we have to learn about.
“At the same time, I want there to be tradition in what I do, to reflect where jazz singing has been and where it is today.”