Nouveau Stride (Lorraine Feather and Stephanie Trick) will perform tonight, Friday, June 21 at 7: 30 p.m. at the West Vancouver Memorial Library, part of the North Shore Jazz series of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival (June 21-July 1). Free. Info: coastaljazz.ca.
LORRAINE Feather couldn't believe what she was hearing.
A self-defined "stride fanatic," the American jazz singer, lyricist and songwriter was talking to a bass-player friend who shared her passion for the early style of jazz piano.
"He told me about this person I had to check out online, a stride player from St. Louis," she says. "He said, 'You won't believe it: A stride player, 23 years old, a girl!' I was a little dubious because stride is so hard to play. I've even worked with top-flight L.A. musicians who have said, 'Oh, I can't play stride, my hands aren't big enough.' So the thought of a girl doing it piqued my curiousity. I looked at her videos and I was just flabbergasted. I couldn't believe how good she was."
Feather began exchanging emails with the pianist, Stephanie Trick, telling her about her own experiences with the genre, including a record she released in 2001. Featuring songs by the great Fats Waller, Feather incorporated original lyrics and vocals. She also told Trick about her 2009 award-winning animated short film
based on one of her Waller adaptations. The short was produced in collaboration with a New York indie animator and screened at 35 international festivals.
Both finding themselves in Los Angeles, the two musicians decided to get together to do some playing.
"We just got on like a house afire," recalls Feather. The women eventually decided to go into the studio and, as duo Nouveau Stride, released Fourteen last fall.
As their respective schedules allow (for example Trick has a packed summer, including a number of international dates with Italian pianist Paolo Alderighi), Feather and Trick are continuing to perform together and are set to take the stage tonight in West Vancouver, part of the North Shore Jazz series of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival, which opens today and runs until July 1.
Nouveau Stride will take the stage at 7: 30 p.m. at a free show at the West Vancouver Memorial Library.
"Every time we perform together it's like Fourth of July it's so much fun," says Feather.
On their duo website, Feather and Trick describe stride piano as, "the movement of the left hand as it strides rapidly over the keys to hit the lower bass notes. A very popular, hard-driving style of music in the 1920s and 1930s, stride piano marked the beginning of jazz."
Feather has long had an interest in jazz. The daughter of late jazz writer Leonard Feather, she takes her name (Billie Jane Lee Lorraine) from her godmother Billie Holiday, her mother Jane (who was a big band singer), Jane's one-time roommate Peggy Lee, and song "Sweet Lorraine."
Since 2007, Feather has called Orcas Island, the largest of Washington State's San Juan Islands, home, a far cry but still a natural progression from her former New York City life.
"I've been kind of going this way for sometime," she says. "I was born in Manhattan. My parents moved to L.A. when I was 12, and then I moved back to New York as an aspiring actress when I was 18, stayed there for quite a few years, eventually got into singing and moved back to L.A. Then when I got married in '83, we had a house in L.A. and then my husband, Tony Morales, was a drummer with a band called The Rippingtons and . . . got interested in computers, and ended up working for Silicon Graphics and we moved to the Bay Area."
At that point Feather was writing for animation as a lyricist as well as other projects that, thanks to the Internet, she was able to work on from anywhere.
"At a certain point we were both working at home and wanted to find a place with more land for our dogs - we don't have kids but we've always had rescue dogs - and we wanted some place beautiful that wasn't as overcrowded as Northern California was becoming. We just took a trip to the San Juan Islands and became smitten and not that long after got a house," she says.
Feather maintains a busy artist schedule, and spends a lot of time travelling to and from LA for her own projects as well as to collaborate with other musicians and writers.
Last year, she released two albums, Fourteen with Trick, as well as solo record Tales of the Unusual, which received a Grammy nomination.
Feather is currently putting the final touches on her next work, Attachments, set for release in August.
"This one is about the different connections we have with people as we go through life, to our families and friends, to lovers, to creatures, to places. It's about the way you attach to all of those through time - attach and detach of course, in some cases," she says.
"It's jazz, but it's all original music, and it's something of a hybrid jazz sound because there is violin, there are classical overtones, there are Americana overtones, so it's not what you would call straight ahead bebop," she adds.
For more information visit nouveaustride.com. For more information on Lorraine Feather, visit lorrainefeather.com, or Stephanie Trick, visit stephanietrick.com.
