Meredith d’AMBROSIO & Frédéric LOISEAU – “MIDNIGHT MOOD”

This album is precious in more ways than one, fitting into an unlikely alignment of the planets of Claude Carrière, Meredith d’Ambrosio and Frédéric Loiseau.

It was Claude Carrière, pianist and radio broadcaster, a great lover and friend of pianist-songwriters – Bob Dorough, Blossom Dearie, Jon Hendricks, Mimi Perrin, Shirley Horn, Mose Allison, Barbara Carroll, Meredith d’Ambrosio … (whom he programmed regularly for more than 25 years, starting in January 1982, in his Jazz-Club on France Musique) who put Frédéric Loiseau and Meredith d’Ambrosio in touch with each other, and from the top of his little cloud, he must be reveling in listening to this music he was partly responsible for creating!

Meredith d’Ambrosio has had two careers, one in the visual arts (trained at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston), the other in music, as a pianist and singer starting out at the age of 17 in pianist Roger Kellaway’s band.

Here’s an extract from a series of interviews with Marc Myers for his JazzWax on September 18, 2009, in which she talks about the creative process, her attempts to overcome her shyness, her encounter with Miles Davis, her friendship with Horace Silver and how she met her husband Eddie Higgins:

JazzWax : What do you think about when you record?

Meredith d’Ambrosio : I try to make everything perfect. I rarely do more than two takes. Sometimes I get stuck on a track and it takes a while. But I want the initial innocence, vulnerability or rawness that appears the first time to be preserved.

JW : Do you think more about the lyrics or the music?

Md’A : I think about what the words mean, but I’m more of a musician. I let myself be carried away by the music I hear when I sing. That music is very important. Like when pianist Lee Musiker plays behind me. Or Don Sickler and the rest of the band on my latest album. I’m not a traditional singer.

JW : Are you not a singer?

Md’A : Not in the usual sense of the word. I only think from the inside. I don’t think about what I want to say. I’m already myself. All I have to worry about is not breathing in the wrong places. Breathing in the middle of a sentence is forbidden. So I’m always thinking about phrasing and how to cut it so that it flows.

JW : What comes first when you write, the melody or the lyrics?

Md’A : When I started recording, I realized that I shouldn’t cut my sentences. So my words wrap around the music. When I write a song, the music comes first. Every note of melody dictates what the word should be, the whole story of the song, the phrase, the poetry. I lose myself in the melody and the chord.

Meredith appeared in at least two of Claude Carrière’s “Jazz Clubs”, one in 1993 with her husband Eddie Higgins (piano), the other on November 12, 1987, with Patrice Caratini (double bass):

No need to introduce Frédéric Loiseau, a sought-after guitarist with a subtle style, trained at the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, in contact with historic guitarists such as Joe Pass and Joe Diorio (no less!)…

Before his return to France in the late 80s, where, alongside an intense teaching activity (he teaches at the Centre des Musiques Didier Lockwood, in several conservatories and runs introductory jazz courses for classical musicians), he honed his partnerships with a plethora of classical and jazz musicians: Dave Liebman, John Abercrombie, Carl Schroeder, the Pee Bee collective, Claude Carrière, Benoit Sourisse and André Charlier, Sheila Jordan, Natalie Dessay, Laurent Naouri, Guillaume de Chassy, Thomas Savy, Bob Dorough, Sara Lazarus, Daniel Yvinec, Emmanuel Bex, Giovanni Mirabassi . ..

The list is too long of those who have identified and embraced the unique sound of “Fred l’Oiseau”, his elegance, his presence and his discretion at the same time, at the origin of that little sensation of amputation felt when the last note is turned off…

Addictive!

What more can I tell you, except that the two of them communicated regularly across the Atlantic until they came up with this project based on a repertoire combining original “Beaucoup Kisses” compositions, a few nuggets from the Great American Songbook (Irving Berlin, Richard Rogers), Duke Ellington (a nod to Claude), Bill Evans, Joe Zawinul….

All recorded by the fireside at Meredith‘s Boston home, with the precious accompaniment of pianist Paul McWilliams and the assistance of François Zalacain, Meredith‘s historic producer and friend of Claude Carrière: a summit of vocal and instrumental sensitivity.

… Indispensable!!!

PS/Perhaps due to the vagaries of publishing, the album was released on the anniversary of Claude’s birth (March 14, 1939) … it was inevitable!