Lucy Lambert’s Violet Drift Is Making Waves In The Jazz Community
Lucy Lambert is a virtuosic accordionist, violinist, jazz singer, and multi-instrumentalist living between Montreal Tiotiak:e and the unceded Coast Salish territories of Vancouver.
The band, Lucy Lambert’s Violet Drift includes Montreal’s top jazz musician Joseph Abbott on the clarinet. Joe has toured and recorded with BC Hall of Famer’s Diane Lines, and Lloyd Artzen, as well as five-time maple award winner Harpdog Brown.
Louis Levesque is the founder of the popular trad group ‘the Royal Pickles’ on the tenor banjo. They also have virtuosic McGill Jazz MFA graduate Juliette Malgrange on cello, creating a bowed 3-part harmony with the clarinet and accordion not often heard in jazz. She is known in such groups as La Fin du Monde, and Tyler Parent on the contrabass (Old Time Honey).
The band unveiled their self-titled album earlier this year, which features eleven tracks, including “Smoke Rings,” which has been picked up by various radio stations. The album is made up of modern interpretations of some early jazz tunes.
Review
Coming in at track seven on the album, “Smoke Rings,” which was originally composed by Gene Gifford, features a unique ensemble of instruments, including the accordion, cello, bass, clarinet, tenor banjo, and the distinctive vocals from Lucy Lambert.
This ensemble of instruments creates a delightful mix of textures and colors, resulting in a truly eclectic and enchanting composition. The arrangement not only showcases the distinct characteristics of each instrument but also amplifies their collective strength when united in harmony.
The lyrics, “Where do they go, The smoke rings I blow each night, What do they do, The circles of blue and white, What do they tell, And what is the spell they cast, Though some of them fall and some of them seem to recall the past, Though most of them rise, Way into the skies above, Oh those smoke rings bring me back my love,” create a vivid atmosphere, exploring the emotions and memories associated with smoke rings. The poetic narrative behind the lyrics leaves an imprint on the listener’s mind.
Overall, “Smoke Rings,” along with the rest of the album showcases the creative possibilities within jazz and shows that pushing boundaries outside of the norm is the way to success.
Listen to “Smoke Rings” below and learn more about Lucy Lambert’s Violet Drift via our Five Questions With segment.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
I am a jazz singer, producer, artist, writer, and world traveler currently residing between Montreal and Vancouver after producing and releasing my first jazz album. I am a multi-instrumentalist, but now I play mostly accordion, violin, and singing, though my first instrument was guitar and I also play piano and now I picked up the trumpet. I am a self-taught musician. I came to jazz accordion through several years of playing in the street with different jazz bands as a travelling street performer, busking my way and playing with different bands through Europe, East Asia, and the United States, before busking my way across Canada to Montreal and starting to play in the jazz scene there. Then I performed and recorded with various jazz and swing groups and pursued a degree in visual arts.
I also have a background in dance training, performance art, theatre, creative writing, and flamenco dance, which I went to Spain to study for 3 months a few years ago. I was also influenced by European jazz and Flamenco music and played with some really incredible groups while I lived in Granada, which is an incredible place to perform in the street underneath the Alhambra castle, with all the tourists passing by and tipping you. It was incredible.
Tell us a bit about your most recent release.
Our album is called Lucy Lambert’s Violet Drift and it is the first jazz album that I have created and produced with some of Canada’s finest Jazz musicians! We have tried to bring something special out of early jazz compositions by arranging the tunes for new instrumentation and for my singing. Our album has less of a big band feel and is more romantic and dreamy because of our use of the three-part harmonies of the accordion, cello, and clarinet. Juliette and Joe are really incredible cellist and clarinetist and it was really special to hear them harmonize and create a special energy with the accordion on the album. Overall I think the album has a really dreamy feeling and a layered and suspended ambiance that brings a pretty unique sound to Duke Ellington and other jazz composers’ compositions, as well as highlighting my personality as a vocalist.
Have you gained any airplay or accolades from the album?
We have already had our new album played on CBC’s Saturday Night Jazz Show with Juno award winner Laila Biali. We also had three songs from our recent album featured on CBC Radio Canada’s selection of Canadian jazz artists in Stanley Pean’s “Quand le Jazz est La” Show. We were featured with 5 of our songs and an interview on the Jazz Today Radio Show, and been played twice on Jazz FM radio. We were interviewed on CKUT, CJSW and were #1 on the CJSW Jazz Charts. We have also been featured on CIBL Jazz Actuel show and CFRO-FM Accordion Noir show, Lushlife, Rimouski Jazz Radio, Coco Jazz, Aeropuerto Jazz Cafe, and Women in Jazz Media.
We have had great reviews in some jazz magazines.
Where do you tend to pull inspiration from when writing?
I tend to draw inspiration from travelling, meeting people, and from my own life. I write autobiographically most of the time. So I try to live an interesting life and keep travelling and having experiences so that I’ll have the inspiration to write and make art. I feel it’s hard to be an artist if you haven’t had many life experiences because that depth of understanding human nature and transcending difficult experiences won’t really be there. That was one of my main incentives to start to travel and busk so much as a young adult, was really so that I would have a lot of life inspiration and characters to draw on for my writing and art.
What’s your goal for 2023?
I have been really excited about promoting our album and putting together a new group of musicians to record another album this year. I also took some time this winter to finish writing my book, which is a 300-page travel- memoir and highlights a lot of pivotal learning experiences in my growth as a jazz musician while I was busking and performing in different parts of the world. I’ve had some great feedback from agencies already so one of my main goals this year is to publish my book, which will give some of my listeners more insight into my background as an artist as well as tell an interesting story.
I am really lucky and grateful to have received my first big arts funding from the Quebec government this year as well, so I am excited to be working on another album with a new group of very talented players! We will be releasing a new jazz record later this year, and playing some shows and festivals around BC and Vancouver where I will be relocating, so, stay tuned!
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