Nicole Zuraitis: ‘Love is beautiful and heartbreaking’

2024 has been a great year for Nicole Zuraitis. In February she won the Best Vocal Jazz Award at the 66th GRAMMY Awards, for her album How Love Begins, a perfect showcase for her vocal prowess, but also for her skills as a pianist and songwriter. Produced by Christian McBride, the album comprises eleven soulful jazz ballads, demonstrating Nicole’s vision for contemporary jazz storytelling, a cause she’s pursuing with passion.

Nicole Zuraitis | Drew Images Photography

Are you tired of talking about the Grammys? Have you had enough of this discussion?

No, I still feel surprised and shocked when I think about it!

Why?

Because it’s the only peer-voted award and I had steep competition, but what I learned from this process is that it doesn’t matter how famous you are, if the piece of art speaks for itself. And my peers voted for it, so it was just amazing to me to know that an independent artist can win a Grammy!

If it hadn’t been you, who would you like it to win in your category?

Another independent artist. I would love for another songwriter to get a Grammy because I think that the art of songwriting is coming back in jazz.

Do you think it’s possible to create new standards?

it’s funny you asked that — I’m actually putting together a book called The new vocal songbook and it features songs by living jazz singer-songwriters. I started it last year and then this year, when I won the Grammy, I obviously put it on the side. My intention is to have two volumes: a traditional style songbook and then also a more modern songbook. I started thinking about this when I saw different artists going viral for singing standards written by the people that inspire me as songwriter.

I thought that the music business is hard enough, wouldn’t it be amazing for everybody if we had easy access to standards just like we had easy access to real books growing up? Standards written by people who are alive, so that we can all support each other at once today.

I’ve collected about 100 entries from different songwriters, including many that I’m sure you know and love.

What kind of songs are you including?

I look for the art of songwriting. I’m looking for song structure, form, melody, and lyrics — the things that the Great American songbook was based on — and we’re also looking for good storytelling through song. I love storytelling, it is very important.

Well, some of the ‘Great American Songbook’ tunes have not aged well, particularly lyric-wise, they don’t fit the times. On the other hand, when I look at your work, I see love songs, of course, and breakup songs — but they have an emotional maturity that is informed by a different social experience.

That’s a really interesting observation. For me, I still feel like I’m growing as a songwriter, I think any songwriter never feels like they’re fully baked, they’re always learning, but I felt that there was a need for a new vocal songbook, because of what you said, some of the outdated lyrics, and also if we only ever sing the same things, there’s no room for innovation.

We have to move the genre forward and in order to do that we have to write the music.

When it comes to whether it’s more emotionally mature, I guess it just depends on the listener. What I love about songwriting is that whatever the songwriter writes, once you release it, it’s not yours anymore, it’s the audience’s, they can interpret it however they want and I love that freedom.

Another thing that has changed a lot since the ‘Great American Songbook’ era is the structure, that’s very different now. How is this reflecting on your work and on the work that you’re compiling at the moment?

If I was to to think about it, obviously jazz is Black American Music, that is the foundation of all the rest of the music, from spirituals to the blues to jazz, to rock’n’roll, to folk — all that stuff is rooted in Black American Music. We have all these different elements that came together and jazz has many different umbrellas and different wings, apart from that first idiom of the genre. What I hope to bring out in jazz music as a songwriter, is still that element of storytelling and form — a good song with a hook, or a good song with a memorable melody, as opposed to a composed piece with lyrics.

Walk me through your songwriting process; how do you approach a song?

Well, what came first the chicken or the egg? It’s either melody or harmony, but oftentimes it comes from a lyric idea, where there’s something to be said — or having a very strong title in mind, because if you have a strong title that can help shape the storyline.

What comes easier for you?

It never comes easy! Sometimes I can write a song in an hour — those are the very intuitive songs — and then other songs you work on for a year and you’re never fully satisfied, and sometimes the only time you finish the songs is if you’re under the barrel of a gun for procrastination. Lately I like to write under assignment I’ve really enjoyed having someone say write me a song about [blank] because it takes away some of the stressors of having to create something out of nothing.

In terms of storytelling, what would you say is the main theme, the common thread that that connects all the stories you tell?

There are two aspects of storytelling that I love in music and performance and theater: one is the song’s clear intention, something that brings the audience on a journey start to finish within a song; then the other part of storytelling that I like is engaging the audience by telling stories on stage in between songs. I think it is important to give context and bring the audience in, as opposed to making it an internal battle, like a lot of people do in jazz, which is to its detriment.

Let’s go back to the award. How has winning influenced your next steps, in terms of songwriting and in terms of planning an album?

Well, winning has been deeply humbling and amazing because it has created more opportunities for me to do the thing that I love — for example come to Australia, that’s amazing to me, the year just kind of blew up in a beautiful way.

I’ve always just made art, I just make it and then I put it out. Even last year, How Love Begins dropped in July and then in December, after I had the nomination, my little EP called Caffeine and Affirmations dropped, because I always have music pumping out. Then my husband [ed.note: drummer Dan Pugach]’s big band album that I produced just came out in in August and I have a little EP coming out in January, and that’s all covers of songs by songwriters that I love, and I made that for fun!

People have said to me “I don’t think you should release an album of covers, after you won a Grammy for an album all-original music” and I’m thinking what does it matter? I’m out here working!

So when I think about my ‘big follow-up album’ I am actually feeling anxiety about that, because it’s going to take time, and time I don’t have.

Is your goal to keep working with Christian McBride? How would you describe your dynamics?

It was a really wild experience for me to have the best bass player in the world come and say “no, you’re going to play the piano on your record!”

The first day in the studio, because I’m so cognizant of everyone’s time, I didn’t want to have people sitting around, so the first two songs that we recorded were ‘Like Dew‘ and ‘Reverie‘ and the instrumentation on that is me on piano and singing, drums, Gilad Hekselman on guitar and Christian McBride on the bass. So here I am recording piano and vocals live with some of the heaviest people in the industry, and that’s because Christian is like the ultimate cheerleader! He was like: “Do you think Carole King doesn’t play piano on her albums?”

Listening back to those recordings, I’m so glad that we recorded the whole album in a way that gave it more of a live feel as opposed to like a more produced, clean ,perfect pop sound.

My last question for you is: how does love begin?

Aw, that’s so cute, haha! Well, I see love as a very cyclical thing — how love begins, how love ends, and how it begins again, like a circle. I was inspired by this aerial photograph of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, it was just visually stunning. When I learned that it was one of the biggest, human-made natural disasters ever, I was thinking that this looks so gorgeous and is so heartbreaking. That’s kind of how I see love, it is beautiful and heartbreaking. We just lost our dog and it’s terrible. You love an animal so much and then they die after only a few years of being alive, but it has to begin again, because their love and the loss of them has to have a purpose, to start again somehow, to move the needle forward. I think love begins with hope.