Cap Jazz Series presents Laila Biali with NiteCap, Friday, Feb. 24, 8 p.m. at the BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts, 2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver. Tickets and info: capilanou.ca/centre or 604-990-7810.
Laila Biali has been living in her own jazz-laden La La Land – making music with Sting and having an audience with jazz greats – since graduating from Handsworth secondary two decades ago.
When she steps on stage at the BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts for the Cap Jazz Series next Friday, it will be a homecoming of sorts for Biali. And the Juno Award-nominated vocalist, pianist and songwriter couldn’t be more excited.
“That’s why this is such a milestone for me because I’m originally from North Vancouver and I’ve never actually played a headlining show at a venue like this,” says Biali, on the line from Toronto where she now lives. “So it’s pretty cool to be coming back and doing this.”
Biali’s family will be in the audience at Capilano University, along with some old friends who have connected with her through Facebook.
“So it’s going to be a reunion for sure,” says Biali.
Handsworth was where Biali met a music teacher who changed the trajectory of her life.
“Yes, in fact, he’s the reason I’m pursuing music full time,” explains Biali, referring to Bob Rebagliati, who was at the helm of Handsworth’s music programs for many years.
Life had dealt Biali a different hand shortly after she arrived at Handsworth. Once a classically trained pianist with lofty aspirations to study at Juilliard, Biali injured her right arm which put her out of piano-playing commission for a while.
Later, while on a path to study sciences post-secondary at UBC, Biali took a complete left turn into jazz – thanks to Rebagliati, who set her up with a jazz piano teacher. At the same time Biali was introduced to one of
Rebagliati’s protégés at Handsworth, Canadian jazz great and multiple Juno Award winner Renee Rosnes, who helped connect classical with jazz music for Biali.
“You can really hear the influence of her classical training in both her playing and her compositions,” says Biali of Rosnes.
Breaking out of the jazz box or genre and finding her own niche in the music world was not an easy transition for Biali.
“This idea of improvising and creating your own melodies within the framework of a Great American Songbook piece of music or what we call jazz standards was very foreign and very challenging for me initially,” she says. “So it wasn’t immediately a natural fit.”
Slowly but surely Biali built a name for herself.
Her first big break came in January 2001 while Biali was still in music school – she had received a scholarship to attend Toronto-based Humber College’s jazz program. Biali signed up to audition for an international collegiate competition called Sisters in Jazz – and was chosen to join the program which catapulted her into a career as a jazz musician.
Besides performing before jazz industry pros, Biali was coached and mentored by leading musicians and other industry folk. She got to rub shoulders and have an audience with some great jazz legends including Oscar Peterson and Nancy Wilson.
“It was really fast … it was a baptism by fire in a way for me,” recalls Biali. “Still a student and here I was performing on international stages.”
Biali’s next lucky break came at the time she needed it the most.
“I was living in New York struggling to make ends meet because New York in the best of circumstances is a difficult city and here I was as a freelance musician trying to get by,” she says.
Biali called her dad and told him it was time for her to move back to Canada and “just be sensible about this whole thing.” It was literally within 24 hours later that Biali got a call from Grammy Award winning artist Lisa Fischer, who was a backup singer for a number of famous artists, including Sting, Luther Vandross and Tina Turner.
Fischer was searching for singers to record with Sting.
“So I was one of the singers she called and she left me this message that had me laughing out loud, totally incredulous,” says Biali.
Within a couple of days of Biali almost giving up on New York, she found herself in a rigorous audition process which ultimately led to her being chosen as one of four singers to make music with Sting.
“It was incredible,” effuses Biali of that experience. “Within a month we were flying to Sting’s villa in Tuscany, rehearsing with him there. We were with him 10 hours a day, staying at his home and eating meals with him and then going into his studio there to rehearse. I mean it was like a fairy tale for me because he was one of my bucket list artists (to work with).”
Sting of course imparted some of his wisdom on Biali. She recalled one particular meal during which the “Every Breath You Take” singer was talking poetically about how he believed all of his songs already existed in some shape or form.
“He feels that songs are already out there and they already exist in some way and as an artist you are pulling these melodies, and these ideas and these lyrics out of this collective creative consciousness, which I thought was really interesting,” says Biali.
Sting encouraged Biali with her songwriting journey and helped her shed the jazz label and move more mainstream, which Biali says took some courage as with any genre you have some people who are purists.
“So I think that was the most difficult hurdle, overcoming the judges in my head as well as critical feedback from people in that world as I was trying to explore crossing those boundaries,” she says.
Being as authentic as she can is how Biali breaks free and then goes “where the music takes you.”
Sometimes what feels most natural for Biali in times of sorrow is for her to sit at the piano and write.
“When difficult circumstances arise and we have to respond, usually there’s a powerful emotional reaction and that will sometimes translate into a song,” says Biali, who has penned lyrics about her personal life.
Biali has recorded six records to date, earned world-wide recognition for her music and performed at prestigious venues including Tokyo’s Cotton Club and NYC’s Carnegie Hall. Her studio recording, Tracing Light, received a Juno nomination in 2011 for Best Vocal Jazz Album of the Year. She has toured with Grammy Award winners Chris Botti, Paula Cole and Suzanne Vega. Biali and Cole were in a band together, along with drummer Ben Wittman who Biali later married.
Her second original music album is set to be released later this year.
“It’s wonderful to cover other people’s songs – you can be a very powerful interpreter of other people’s music – but I do think that there’s another level of connection that can exist when you are creating your own work,” she says.
The upcoming album is inspired by recent events in Biali’s life and around the world. There’s a song about the Syrian refugee crisis, Biali’s love letters from the road to her husband and son, and emotions evoked from watching Biali’s Brooklyn neighbourhood go through gentrification and the resulting “demovictions” of multi-generations of families.
Biali is fresh off a European tour, which she is hailing as a success. She sold-out a Tuesday night show in Zurich, “a delightful surprise,” says Biali. Then in Poland she received multiple standing ovations and encores and ran out of CDs, which sold like hotcakes.
“It was totally unexpected and left me soaring,” says Biali.
Biali is curious, looking ahead to her performance next week with NiteCap, the premier vocal jazz ensemble of Capilano University’s Jazz Studies degree program lead by Réjean Marois, who’s prepared some special arrangements of Biali’s songs and other people’s music. Biali is excited to see what Marois has come up with.
The first set will feature Biali on vocals/piano, Adam Thomas on bass/vocals and Joel Fountain on drums/vocals, as Biali takes the best of pop, rock, classical, world, and soul and infuses it with her jazz experimentation.
Biali will also debut a couple of brand-new songs from the upcoming album.
These days Biali divides her time between New York and Toronto, where her six-year-old son Josh has joined the Canadian Children’s Opera Company.
Biali believes her son shows a precocious interest in singing because she was touring with Sting when she was pregnant with Josh, thereby exposing him to music while in the womb.
“And Sting used to always joke about my husband Ben and say he’s the father of my baby,” says Biali with a laugh, adding she’s still in touch with Sting, who always asks how Josh is doing.
Sting sings Biali’s praises and is quoted in a press release promoting the Cap Jazz Series event as saying:
“It is the ultimate task given to the musician, whether as singer or instrumentalist, to create a unique signature or fingerprint that is instantly recognizable as their own. What is surprising and delightful in Laila Biali is that both as vocalist and pianist she accomplishes this with equal aplomb. She is an exciting and unique talent, and I admire her greatly.”
