Jazz Pianist Caili O’Doherty Reclaims Lil Hardin Armstrong » PopMatters

Pianist Caili O’Doherty has been recording as a pacesetter since 2015, simply two years after she graduated from the Berklee Faculty of Music. Educating and touring the world adopted, however she could have simply come into her personal within the final a number of years. Since 2018, she has been creating a musical and academic undertaking round celebrating the lifetime of Lil Hardin Armstrong.

Hardin famously married Louis Armstrong in 1924 when each had been enjoying within the well-known King Oliver Orchestra throughout its engagement in Chicago. She was a educated musician, a superb sight reader, and a budding composer. Hardin helped Armstrong get classical coaching and inspired him to go away his mentor’s band to make his personal profession. The couple cut up and divorced within the Nineteen Thirties, however Hardin’s profession as a bandleader and profitable composer lasted by the Nineteen Sixties.

Caili O’Doherty‘s new album, Bluer Than Blue: Celebrating the Lifetime of Lil Hardin Armstrong, is a dynamic reimagining of one of many first important girls in jazz. The band on the recording labored on this music with O’Doherty for fairly some time: bassist Tamir Shmerling, drummer Cory Cox, Nicole Glover on tenor saxophone, and vocalists Tahira Clayton and Michael Mayo. The result’s a nine-track voyage by classic songs (six with lyrics, two with Mayo singing wordless vocals, one piano solo) demonstrating that Hardin’s work stands as much as the best songwriting of the Tin Pan Alley period.

That is Caili O’Doherty’s third launch as a pacesetter. Her debut, Padme (2015), included a number of totally different entrance traces (a sextet, a quartet that includes alto saxophonist Caroline Davis, a guitar-fronted quartet, and one monitor with a wordless vocal deciphering the chief’s crisp, fashionable unique compositions. 2022’s Quarantine Dream featured the instrumental quartet (with Glover, Shmerling, and Cox) from the brand new document, performing originals and three jazz classics in a straight-ahead and propulsive fashion.

Bluer Than Blue is Caili O’Doherty’s most formidable and daring launch to this point. It’s not only a “idea album” constructed round a single composer however an act with private and political implications. It’s not a recreation of the previous however a contemporary refraction of Hardin’s compositions that makes clear how subtle her imaginative and prescient was and the diploma to which her expertise remained necessary past her affiliation with Armstrong. Any variety of modern musicians might (and may!) have labored on a Lil Hardin Armstrong undertaking during the last 60 years, but it surely is smart that it ended up being a millennial lady who is aware of the boundaries girls face within the jazz world.

PopMatters talked to Caili O’Doherty about her new recording and profession. Not coincidentally, the dialog turned to how tough it’s to make jazz within the present local weather, notably as a younger lady and a mom.

This undertaking feels like your most intriguing and complicated to this point. You got here out of Berklee a dozen years in the past, so that you’re hardly a rookie. Nonetheless, this looks as if an important profession second.

I consider on this undertaking so strongly. It’s a labor of affection. I’ve been enjoying these preparations and music since 2018 and even took it on a State Division tour abroad. You will need to shine a lightweight on the ladies who paved the best way for us. Lil was a feisty and fierce lady. It was her concept to market Louis because the world’s greatest trumpet participant. She was outspoken and intensely nicely educated — she went to school towards all odds, was fluent in studying music, and constructed a profession doing that. She was musically fluent and educated. She was already in King Oliver’s band when Louis joined. Later in her profession, she positioned songs with Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and doo-wop teams. 

I hope this undertaking lets a number of individuals hear the music. I’ve excessive hopes.

Inform us concerning the genesis of creating this a full album.

It began with a category I took at Queens Faculty on Louis Armstrong with Ricky Riccardi [who is the Director of Research Collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum]. He saved mentioning Lil Hardin in passing. I used to be curious to be taught extra. The Armstrong Museum has an archive, and I discovered the unique sheet music documenting their work collectively. I did a deep dive into her music and realized she was an unbelievable composer.

In 2018, I did a residency at Dizzy’s Membership at Jazz at Lincoln Middle and pitched the concept of this undertaking. I organized 12 songs for the residency. A number of years later in 2021 I obtained a grant by Chamber Music America to current this undertaking in partnership with the Nationwide Jazz Museum in Harlem in addition to the Alabama Girls in Jazz Pageant and New Orleans Jazz Museum to document a three-part live performance sequence centered on these preparations. I additionally developed this into an schooling program at Jazz at Lincoln Middle and past.

Lastly, I acquired to make the undertaking right into a full album, recorded reside on the Nationwide Jazz Museum in Harlem, all in at some point. By that point, the band had performed the music fairly a bit. We had been prepared.

Hardin was a songwriter in a practice that was at its top when she was lively. As a recent jazz musician, what makes her compositions get up over time?

Harmonically, the chord progressions she used had been unconventional. The melodies are memorable and have distinctive phrasings. They sound fashionable. And a few of her lyrics are unbelievable. Even when I hadn’t organized her compositions, they had been good the best way they had been. My objective with this undertaking was to make them extra fashionable however preserve their integrity.

The impediment of arranging older music is to not overarrange and to not alter each single tune. I’ve a really robust identification as a composer, and my current recordings have featured totally unique music. I even have my very own identification as an arranger. The problem right here was to do extra than simply play her tunes however, as a contemporary lady in jazz, to re-envision her music within the custom.

Overlaying Hardin’s songs, it is smart to collaborate with singers. Right here you’ve gotten Michael Mayo and Tahira Clayton completely shining. You may have labored with singers quite a bit. How did these singers develop into the appropriate ones for this undertaking?

Each have been working with the band on the undertaking for a while. Tahira has an incredible sound and nice versatility. She has an unbelievable reward of storytelling and makes the lyrics come alive. She makes these preparations really feel fashionable whereas honoring the originals, one foot within the current and one previously. Michael has unbelievable musicianship — something he hears, he can play. He brings a contemporary cool to the sound of Hardin’s melodies — he’s great singing lyrics, however he provides one other dimension to the ensemble, typically, with little bluesy fills which are fashionable and chromatic however nonetheless linked to a gospel sound.

The transformation of “Let’s Get Glad Collectively”, that includes Tahira Clayton, is layered. It has a dreamy, luxurious piano introduction that just about questions the tune’s title, after which the band enters in a slippery, jagged time signature.

The band enters in 7/4 time, after which the bridge swings in 4/4. The lyrics are fascinating — a bit darkish and cynical. Lil’s lyrics are sometimes sassy. They might virtually sound corny until they’re made extra complicated or given a unique which means by the association. The vamp for this association shifts between diminished and main chords, so it’s each darkish and pleased.

The stop-time breaks you employ within the association of “Glad As we speak, Unhappy Tomorrow” appear to be a tribute to the outdated Hardin/Armstrong recordings of the Nineteen Twenties. Nonetheless, you improvise with one other 100 years of jazz piano in your head. You play the breaks, then Nicole Glover steps in and feels like Coleman Hawkins one second and Sonny Rollins the subsequent, along with her fashionable twists and turns.

That may be a good statement of how I toe the road between the historical past of those songs and making them modern. We improvise based mostly on fashionable concord, however the stop-time hits are an homage to the outdated recordings. Nicole is tremendous versatile in how she will play fashionable music whereas honoring the historical past of this music.

Nicole and I grew up collectively since we had been 11. We each studied with Thara Reminiscence as a part of his American Music Program, a youth jazz orchestra based mostly in Portland, Oregon. He had unconventional methods of educating and of getting us research this music. For instance, we often went as a band to the house of an awesome Ghanaian drummer, Obo Addy, and discovered African drums. He additionally took us as a band to a salsa dance class. 

You play essentially the most iconic Hardin/Armstrong tune, “Struttin’ with Some Barbeque”, as a solo piano efficiency. Speak a bit about Hardin’s pianism and this recording.

Lil, as a pianist, will not be simple to speak about. There isn’t a lot audio of her stretching out. I wished to think about what she would sound like if she had been given extra room. On this monitor, I used to be making an attempt to reclaim this well-known composition as one thing that she wrote on the piano. Additionally, this monitor contributes to the album’s number of band sounds: the trio with two totally different singers, some with lyrics and a few with out, the addition of tenor saxophone on some tunes, and solo piano as nicely.

Making a dwelling as a inventive musician has by no means been simple. Inform me about how you’re negotiating your artwork and economics at a second when there isn’t any single path to creating music that you just consider in and connects to the jazz custom.

It’s tough, however you get right into a rhythm. I used to be just lately commissioned to rearrange the music of one other under-recognized lady in jazz. I educate at The New Faculty, I educate on-line, I play gigs, I get grants, I’ve performed US State Division excursions. In 2026, I’ll launch a brand new work, “Suite for Gearoidin”, by one other Chamber Music America grant. You retain the wheel shifting.

Recordings simply price a lot cash to make. Bluer Than Blue was funded partly by a grant particularly for making movies of our performances, however in addition they allowed us to show it right into a recording. Nonetheless, to fund the radio and publicity for this, I did a fundraiser. The inventive tasks we do are largely self-funded. You pay to create your artwork slightly than earn money from it.

I’m a brand new mom, too. My husband is Cory Cox, the drummer on this new document. Having a child provides one other problem. Earlier than, if I booked a tour, it was comparatively easy. Now I’ve to handle childcare and journey with a child. Attempting to be a working lady, a mother, and a jazz musician is a large problem. Earlier than I used to be a mother, it felt doable to tour and handle all of it, however there isn’t any help for girls musicians and no funding for childcare. The gigs and excursions don’t pay sufficient. All the things comes right down to time. I believe there must be extra monetary help put into musicians who’re moms.

My husband and I aren’t ravenous artists. We reside in Jersey Metropolis, New Jersey, which is a little more reasonably priced than New York Metropolis, and we’re owners. However the quick reply is: you’re employed actually onerous.