Oct. 23 at Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club: Saxophonist Grace Kelly, on pushing the creative envelope

PORTSMOUTH, NH – Today’s modern jazz artists don’t mind pushing the creative envelope. They exhibit the ability of moving the art form forward in new and fresh directions while honoring the roots of the genre. One of the many examples of this is the immensely talented saxophonist Grace Kelly. The Wellesley, Mass., native is always doing something cool with her music, which includes her latest album “Grace Kelly with Strings: At The Movies” that came out on March 1. There’s a high possibility that she and her band will be performing a few tunes off of the release when they take the stage at Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club in Portsmouth on October 23 at 7:30 p.m.

We had a talk ahead of the show about the creation process for the album, always loving to come back to the East Coast and her plans for future projects going into next year.

IF YOU GO

Website: Jimmys Jazz & Blues Club

135 Congress St, Portsmouth, NH

Tickets

Rob Duguay: For the making of “Grace Kelly with Strings: At The Movies”, you and an ensemble recorded renditions of music from various films including the “James Bond” series, “Pirates of The Caribbean,” “Mission Impossible,” and “Back To The Future.”  How did the idea for this project come to be?

Grace Kelly: Growing up, I always really loved movies and songs from cinema. My favorite night of the week was Friday night when we’d go to Blockbuster, if you can still remember that place.

RD: I absolutely can.

GK: Well, one night, my dad brought home the movie “High Society” starring Princess Grace Kelly. I think I was six years old at the time and when I saw her for the first time on the screen, I absolutely fell in love with her. Then I went to school in my kindergarten class the next day and I announced to everyone that I was Princess Grace Kelly, which actually isn’t my original name. My birth name is Grace Chung, but as fate and the stars would have it, my stepfather’s last name is Kelly. He actually adopted me and my sister when I was eight years old, so my name turned into Grace Kelly.

It feels like a very full circle moment to record a song she sang in cinema along with some of my other favorites. The reason why we recorded it with this string ensemble is because one of my favorite jazz albums is “Charlie Parker with Strings”. I remember hearing his rendition of “Just Friends” and listening to that every day, so I always dreamed that I’d get to do a recording with strings and the day has finally come.

RD: I think it’s a great record and I enjoyed listening to it.

GK: Thank you.

RD: No problem. What was the recording experience like for the album and getting all of these musicians involved? Was it all done live or did you have guest contributors like Sean Jones and Cory Wong send in their parts remotely?

GK: We kind of pieced it together. A certain selection of the album was recorded in one room with a string ensemble at the Ostin Music Center on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. Then we did even more post-production on it where both Cory Wong and Sean Jones did their parts remotely. We worked on this album for over a year, and before we went into the studio, we actually did a live performance of it at the Barclay Theatre, which was our debut performance. Then we went straight into the studio and we kept working on it, kept chipping away at it for the year and then finally it went into mixing and mastering while I worked closely with my producer to do all the final touches.

RD: How did you go about picking the songs? You mentioned “High Society.” and one of the songs from that film is in it, but did you do a lot of research on the material you were interested in or was it more depending on what came to mind first when this idea came about?

GK: It was a little bit of both. I definitely put some of my favorites with lesser known songs like “True Love,” which Princess Grace Kelly actually sang on the screen. I did a bunch of research beforehand to see what are some of the most beloved movie songs which happened to very much align with ones that I loved as well. As much as I always want to relate to the music, it’s also important to me that this album can bring my listeners down memory lane while being emotional and nostalgic. I feel like the tracks that we did pick have very much hit home for a lot of people, so it was a long list to begin with and certainly not an easy one to cut down, but we were able to cut it down to the final assortment.

RD: You have a lot of classics on the album, so I totally understand the nostalgic feeling you were going for. Being a musician from Massachusetts, what are your thoughts on heading up to Portsmouth to perform at Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club?

GK: I’m very excited. I think Jimmy’s is such a fantastic club and we’re looking forward to coming back. There’s always such a great crowd with amazing energy. Growing up outside of Boston, the East Coast is very much near and dear to my heart, so I always look forward to performing in the area.

RD: It’s always good to come back home, especially with the holiday season approaching.

GK: Exactly.

RD: Going into next year, do you have any plans to work on a record of new material or do you just plan on touring for the time being and seeing where it goes?

GK: Believe it or not, this year marks my 20th anniversary of being in the music industry, which is kind of wild. I started performing professionally when I was 12 years old, so here we are 20 years later. We’re going to be doing some kind of celebration in an album format to ring in the anniversary, and then I will also be working on a bunch of new music. I don’t know if it’ll be out next year since I’m in the beginning of getting into it, but I’m going to be continuing to do live shows so fans will be able to catch me.