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New Standards

Cyrille Aimée: Between NOLA and Sondheim

French jazz singer Cyrille Aimée performs live in The Greene Space

The French Jazz singer Cyrille Aimée is one of those rare people who actually followed through on their New Year's resolutions. In the past few months, she moved from New York to New Orleans, started performing with a new band, and released her ninth album.

Going through a breakup is never easy, and Move On: A Sondheim Adventure explores the Stephen Sondheim songbook from the point of view of her own romantic tribulations. Cyrille brings a fresh take, with colorful arrangements, NOLA influences and instrumentation that goes from voice and bass duo to strings ensemble.

Cyrille stopped by the WNYC studios to chat with American Standards host Paul Cavalconte about the album, her creative process, and meeting Sondheim for the first time.

 

The following transcript has been edited.

Paul Cavalconte: Paul Cavalconte with you and enjoying the company (for a little while today) of Cyrille Aimee.

Cyrille Aimee: Hello

Paul: Oh boy.. Is there a lot of French packed into that hello!

[laughter]

 Paul: And a lot of music too! It's almost impossible for you to not be musical. Even just the way you say hello. There's a lilt to it.

Do you feel that the happy circumstance of your background, you know, coming from where you come from and the way your cultural worlds merge... did that make you more musical than say, "Oh, I should be an accountant for a living?" Between New York, between France. Between all the things that made you, you. Is music guiding that and directing that from the very start?

Cyrille: Well, for sure. All of these influences, and all these experiences, and all these places have made me who I am now, and have definitely been guided by music throughout my life. I kind of followed where music was taking me and it took me to a lot of places.

Paul: Music is in charge and you let it point the way. The path pointed you to this immediate neighborhood. We broadcast from the so-called "Hudson Square" part of downtown Manhattan and there is an equal reach to Soho, Greenwich Village, Tribeca... In your early days, what were your musical stomping grounds? Right around here, right in this neighborhood?

Cyrille: I was playing, when I first came to America. I got a gig every single Saturday in the Cupping room in Soho, which is West Broadway and Broom Street. I played that gig every Saturday for seven years. It was a four hour gig. Just me, a bass player, and a drummer. And I learned so much from that gig.

Paul: Is Stephen Sondheim something that would have been on your radar at that early stage or did you grow into him?

Cyrille: That was way later.

Paul: So that's the advanced course.

Cyrille: Uh-huh. Exactly.

When I'm talking about the cupping room, that's when I was in college. And I've only discovered Stephen Sondheim a few years ago, when I was asked to perform for the New York City Center's "Encores". They did a show, a tribute to Stephen Sondheim played by the Wynton Marsalis orchestra and the two female singers were myself and Bernadette Peters. That was my introduction to Stephen Sondheim.

Paul: Wow, that's trial by fire.

Cyrille: Yeah. I don't think there could be a better introduction.

Paul: So, you've taken a brave step in putting together  "Move On: a Sondheim Adventure". You have chosen to take a breezy approach to some songs and the instrumentation is very singular. It isn't what the average person approaching a Sondheim project would immediately think right off the bat: I think that we've come to see Stephen as being sort of, art-music and worthy of serious, almost symphonic presentation like you were describing. So, tell me how you came to the approach that we hear and are so delighted by because it's a breath of fresh air on "Move On: a Sondheim Adventure".

Cyrille: Well, when I had this project in mind, what I had in my head was something very cinematographic.

I really wanted the whole album to tell a story. And I even put the songs in a chronological order that tells my story. And for each song I wanted a different vibe, a different color.

[music]

Cyrille: For each song, I really thought long and hard of what the instrumentation would be so that there would be a very different energy in each track of the record.

[music]

Cyrille: So some songs are just duo. Some are just even, just vocal.

Some songs have piano, bass, drums, guitar, horns, and string quartet. It's very varied throughout the record.

[music]

Paul: Were those choices (in terms of arrangements) something that might have put some steel bars down in front of, for example, a song like Send In The Clowns? You left it off and maybe for that reason?

Cyrille: No, not at all. The way I chose these songs, when I first chose the songs, I didn't think at all about how I was going to perform them, how I was going to arrange them. The way I chose them was with the lyrics. I basically got the four volume books of Stephen Sondheim's music and just read through it like a book. I put a little checkmark on the stories that I liked, on the lyrics that I thought resonated with me, and that I could relate to. And then from those, I went online and checked out the music. But before anything, the lyrics were the most important thing for me.

Paul: So, Send in the Clowns goes to a lyric place that didn't really work with the narrative that you were creating for "Move On: A Sondheim Adventure".

Cyrille:  Well, and also, I can't put 40 songs on one CD.

[laughter]

Cyrille: I had to choose.

Paul: If you order, now you'll get all 40! Cyrille Aimee!" You ever hear those late night ads for crummy records that play shortened versions of 100 songs?

[laughs]

Cyrille: No, I have not.

Paul: They used to have them.

Cyrille Aimee is paying us a visit. Did you have a chance to meet Stephen Sondheim or had any contact with him around this project?

Cyrille: Yeah. Actually, I met him for the first time when I did that show with Bernadette Peters a few years ago. I remember I was doing 'You Could Drive a Person Crazy'. I had a moment in that song where I was trading with Wynton. Scatting, you know improvising. And Steven came to my dressing room knocked on my dressing room door and told him I made him laugh and cry. So, that was the first time I met him. So, I kept in touch. And when I told him about this CD, he was very curious and excited. I sent it to him as soon as it was done, mastered, and he replied that he thought it was wonderful.

Paul: This is real royalty. I mean, how many people of that stature are really left? So, that's impressive.

Cyrille: Yeah. For me, it's very humbling and it's the best compliment I could ever have on this record.

Paul: We tend to think of those Stephen Sondheim songs as being 'hard-won life experience' kinds of songs. You're all about youth and freshness. Were any of them a stretch for you to kind of inhabit their space? Did you maybe project yourself into, where you see life going down the road?

Cyrille: No. To tell you the truth, and actually this is something I told Stephen Sondheim. When I was working on these songs, I on purpose, did not do the research to see whp ischaracter singing the song, what is the context of the song or what it's really about. Because I wanted to take these songs out of context and really make them my own and tell my own story through them. So, the reason I chose these songs is because they were not a stretch from me is because they felt really right for me. When I was working on these these arrangements and these songs, I was actually going through a really rough time and a lot of changing things in my life (which is why also I decided to call it Move On). I had just closed a chapter with the previous band that I had been touring with for five years. I moved from New York City to New Orleans. I had a terrible breakup. And all this pain, this heartache, this excitement, this newness helped me in creating these arrangements and in working on on these songs.

Paul: Well that sure answers the question because it reminds us that 'hard-won life experience' inhabits any age. You know the kid with the red fire truck and a wheel breaks. That's as a 'hard-won life lesson' as what you're talking about or what somebody faces 40 years down life's road and the universality of Stephen's music is that he asks us to engage in a little bit of problem solving in those songs and to check our ego at the door. Aren't they kind of unique in that way

Cyrille: Yeah, I mean, like I said when I was choosing these songs I was reading like a book and every song was like a short story. There's a beginning, there's a middle, and there is an ending. It's very rare to find songs like that.

Paul: You are so comfortable with the so-called American Songbook canon, the great mid century body of work that came from the American musical theater and then translated to jazz. But you've also experimented with other songs from different worlds that you've adapted to your style. You do some wonderful things for example with a couple of Michael Jackson's songs. So what is a new standard for you? How would you define the Great American Songbook and if you could pick a tune to nominate for us to add to that growing list? Could you give us an example?

Cyrille: Well I guess I would I would pick one from from the Stephen Sondheim repertoire because I do think that you know just like the American Songbook comes from musical theater, Stephen Sondheim's music is in the same category. And I think Loving you.

[music] 

Cyrille:  It is one that when we're playing it live and enjoy with a jazz quartet, we have so much fun. [music] Stretching out on it and really digging in the harmony.[music] It's in AB form, kind of like a a lot of jazz standards that you can find, and such a beautiful, beautiful message. 

Paul: Well, I think Stephen Sondheim's music has long been a part of the scenery in our world. We've embraced and accepted his kinds of songs as absolutely standards. But, pushing it beyond just the theater. Maybe to what you hear on the radio or music that you share through downloads and stuff. What's new and ear catching to you? And what song of even more recent vintage could you point to is something that we could own as a new page in the songbook?

Cyrille: I mean every day there's new songs that come out. Being a professional musician, a lot of my friends are professional musicians and I am a big fan of many of them. And whenever they put songs out, I'd eat them up! I just,I really love everything that's coming out constantly and I don't know what book it belongs in, but it's just music in the end.

Paul: There's a wonderful bit of pedigree in your background: the fact that you come from a small town in France that was once the home of Django Reinhart. Boy, that there's got to be something in the air or the water, huh?

Cyrille Aimee: Yeah. That's actually, basically the reason why I'm here today. Because I grew up with a very...My parents are not musicians, but they love music they love to dance. So I grew up associating music with dance. My mother's from the Dominican Republic and so she would always put on salsa, meringue, bachata for us to dance to. And my father loved my mother so he loved to dance too. But when I was a little girl growing up in Django Reinhardt's town, I would go to the gypsy camp sites because there's a a Django Reinhardt festival in his honor every year. He was a gypsy. So gypsies from all across Europe come in their caravans by hundreds and set camp in the fields in Samois, including his family. And so when I was a little girl I became friends with the gypsies and became really obsessed with their way of life and their culture because it was so different than mine. And I fell in love with their music and the way they made music which was really 'music in the moment', a lot of improvisation, just like the way they live. And so that definitely was a big influence on me. 

Paul: Well, an improvised life is the only kind of life that you can live in New York. It is the great "Gypsy metropolis" if you want to extend that to, to the constant change ups and and the whirlwind way that we are in touch with the modern world in New York being the center of that certainly. It is a place for you to call home.

 Playing at Birdland must be one of your favorite experiences, do you have any other special or favorite gigs that you love to play? What's the ideal room, band size situation for you?

Cyrille: I really love playing in a lot of places. I love playing at Smalls. I love being really close to the audience. That's something that you can do here in New York. 

Paul: Smalls! That's a great spot because you go downstairs like you do at the Village Vanguard. You know, they used to be so many places like that. We've lost them in New York. So it's a treasure. And you're a treasure because you continue to do music as spontaneously as you do.

A Sondheim Adventure is your ninth album. Cyrille Aimee, where do we go from here?

Cyrille: Well, you know. I'm gonna give it some time. Just like I said, I just moved down to New Orleans so I'm gonna see what that inspires in me. And just discover a different way of life and meet new people, meet new musicians.

[music.]

Paul: Are you right in the French Quarter or thereabouts?

Cyrille: Everything's very close there. I'm a 10 minute bike ride away. 

Paul: A 10 minute bike ride away. That's the way to do it! Or hop on one of those trolleys.

Have you enjoyed, for example, Tipitina's on an off-night when nobody knew it was you and you were just checking out a band? Have you had that experience yet?

Cyrille: Yeah, I've been to a lot of clubs over there.

Paul: Maple Leaf?

Cyrille: I love the Spotted Cat.

Paul: Yeah.

Cyrille: And the Sydney Saloon. I actually have done a bunch of shows there, just solo. Just me and the loop machine. And it's really fun because I had never done that before. And I've done also a few shows, duo, with Nicholas Payton. Just him and me.

Paul: Fantastic. Well there are so many great New Orleans people and we're losing them. You know, Allen Toussaint is gone. Get Dr. John to commit to you before it's too late. I would love to hear a collaboration between you two.

Cyrille Aimee. Thank you for visiting and thank you for having an 'out of the box' experience with every musical project that you approach. Your music is wonderful and it has earned its place in the songbook. Thanks Cyrille Aimee.

Cyrille: Thank you Paul.