It’s the question on the mind of everyone who has heard Nicole Zuraitis’ new double album The Devil I Knew: Who is this titular man who did her wrong? You might get the answer Thursday when Zuraitis comes to Edwin’s, and if you do, you might be in for a surprise.
Zuraitis plays piano and writes her own music and lyrics (19 of the 20 songs on The Devil are hers). “I’m writing the chords; I’m writing the arrangements. I’m handing everything to the band,” she said on a video call last month. “And then in true jazz fashion, I trust them to make decisions based on what I hand to them. That, to me, is jazz in a nutshell. In a pop recording, everyone has their parts. It’s to a click. For me, all the vocals on the record are live. All the takes are live. Nothing’s to a click. If the take wasn’t good enough, it’s like, okay, well, we better find a better take.”
Zuraitis was a terrific interview. Get her started on a topic that she believes in, and she’ll give you an unvarnished opinion, delivered with considerable charm and the frankness of an Italian grandma.
Take the much-debated issue of repertoire. Zuraitis will sing Songbook standards—and sing the hell out of them–but she is a composer, and she wants to encourage the writers who will establish tomorrow’s canon.
“That’s why I started Modern Songbook Society, because I realized that there’s just not enough singers being celebrated who also write,” she said. “I also want singers who don’t write to sing songs by people who are alive. So that’s Modern Songbook Society: try and make a community.”
The Society has several chapters where, Zuraitis said, “We’re encouraging jazz singer- songwriters to get together and write together, Nashville-style, and for jazz singers to check it out and be like, ‘You know what? I really dig the song by Vilray, “Indifference.” really wanna sing that song,’ Great. Or, “I checked out Caity Gyorgy’s record “Hello! How Are You?” and I think that song is so cute. I want my students to sing that.’’
“As someone who’s skirted around the outskirts of jazz for many years and had people say, ‘You’re not a jazz singer, you’re a rock singer.’ ‘You’re not a jazz singer; you’re a pop singer.’ ‘You’re not a jazz singer; you’re a country singer.’ ‘You’re not a jazz singer.’ I’m just like, you know what? [laughs] I’m gonna start an army of singer-songwriters who also love the tradition of jazz and Black American music.”
To be fair, there are songs on The Devil I Knew where Zuraitis can summon the power of an arena rocker, sell a song like a Vegas headliner and spin a tale as convincing as any Nashville diva can—sometimes within a single number.
On the bandstand and especially in conversation, Zuraitis has the earthy warmth of, say, Anna Magnani, and though her surname has Lithuanian origins, her mother’s family is Italian. So, without giving away the identity of the titular demon, I asked Zuraitis if she believes in the devil. “I’m pretty woo-woo myself, and so I think I inherited this kind of witchy, woo-woo life.
“My aunt in Italy, whenever we visit her, if I say anything that seems like it could have a bad connotation, she immediately does the cornuto [devil’s horns] sign,” she said. “I actually was nervous when I used the word devil in my album title. I was like, oof! Am I inviting something weird? And then I was like, No. I have zero darkness in me. I’m not a dark person, even though now I have a murder of crows that visits me every day when I’m home.”
Nicole Zuraitis, Thursday, Sept. 24, 7 p.m., EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute, 12383 Cedar Road, Cleveland Heights. Tickets from $27.50, available here. Nicole Zuraitis will present a free masterclass at Edwin’s from 5-6 p.m.
The Devil I Knew is available from Bandcamp at this link.
For the most complete listing of jazz and jazz-adjacent events., look to Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar.
