Jazz chanteuse cements Bay Area breakthrough
Laila Biali comes to Oakland with a new album of original tunes
A century before Laila Biali found herself longing to emotionally break through to audiences with her music, author E.M. Forster diagnosed her dilemma in “Howards End.”
“Only connect!” he wrote in the 1910 novel. “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted.”
For Biali, a Canadian jazz pianist and singer from Vancouver, the desire to link her lyrics to her tunes flowed from the years she spent touring as a backup vocalist and keyboardist with Sting, Paula Cole, Suzanne Vega and Chris Botti.
“I got to witness a different level of connection they were experiencing, because of the personal vulnerability as they shared their songs and the stories,” says Biali, 37, who plays Yoshi’s on Monday. “I wanted to explore that space and that voice. I longed to have that connection.”
Monday’s show is only her second performance in the Bay Area. She made her debut in spring 2015 at San Francisco’s Red Poppy Art House, an intimate venue that feels packed with 50 people.
The Toronto- based Biali returns on a tour celebrating the release of an impressive self-named album focusing on her original songs that reflect her deep engagement with jazz and growing confidence as a melodically inventive composer. Working closely with her husband, drum-
mer and producer Ben Wittman (who co-produced Jonatha Brooke and Jennifer Kimball’s two albums as the duo The Story), she’s found a sweet spot applying a musical toolkit brimming with jazz devices to her pop craftsmanship.
“I knew I had something to say, and there were ideas there to be divined,” Biali says. “It’s an interesting journey and quite painful. I still feel very early in my development in that area. It’s become an important component of my live performances.”
In many ways, she’s continuing a journey that she traces back to her early years studying jazz piano. At 18, she caught a performance by the brilliant pianist-keyboardist Geoffrey Keezer, who got his start as a teenager playing with Art Blakey and went on to tour and record extensively with Christian McBride.
“The thing that grabbed me is that he started playing Bjork,” she says. “I felt like the only person in the club who recognized the song. Then he launched into a Radiohead piece. He was playing the music of my generation! People were hanging on every note, and I was so knocked out those two worlds could coexist.”
While Biali is introducing herself to audiences in the United States, she’s already
well-known and highly regarded at home in Canada. In 2003, the 23-year- old won a rising star award at the National Jazz Awards in Toronto, and two years later, she took home keyboardist and composer of the year honors. But it was her 2007 CBC Records-commissioned album “From Sea to Sky” that made her something of a phenomenon.
Her versions of songs by Feist, Joni Mitchell, k.d. lang, Ron Sexsmith and other Canadian songwriters “put me on the map as a cover artist,” she says. “Prior to that, I was known for my composing,” a status she reclaimed with her 2011 Juno Award-nominated album “Tracing Light.” At Yoshi’s, she’ll be presenting originals and songs from the American and Canadian
songbooks.
Biali credits the club’s longtime artistic director, Michael Pritchard, with maintaining an open line of communication over the years when she was hustling to break through to American audiences.
“When I first came knocking, he took the time to respond,” she recalls. “He asked, do you have a following in the Bay Area? Of course, I didn’t. But I reached out over the years, and with the new album, he bit. Maybe it helped that Ambrose Akinmusire plays on it. I know him from way back when.”
The Oakland trumpet star’s incisive contributions on two tracks of her eponymous Chronograph Records release reveals the foundational role the Bay Area
played in her musical development. She met Akinmusire in 2002 when they were both on the faculty at the Stanford Jazz Workshop.
“He was about 20, and I remember thinking, I want to work with this guy someday,” she says. “I taught at the workshop for several years, and met amazing artists like saxophonist Tia Fuller and Sasha Dobson, who was an anchoring presence when I moved to New York City. She’s such a sweetheart. Our paths didn’t cross often, but it was comforting to know that she was there. The Bay Area feels like it’s had this interesting place in my story.”
Biali’s next chapter starts Monday.