[Dixielandjazz] Nikki Yanofsky interviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Is the industry going to force the tremendous talent of Nikki Yanofsky into pop music?

--Bob Ringwald



Nikki Yanofsky: She's Gotta Grow
by Peter Goddard
Toronto Star, April 19, 2012
Gordon Lightfoot. Bob Dylan. Bob Marley, Neil Young. They've all had breakthrough
nights at Massey Hall. So have Glenn Gould and Charlie Parker, the great jazz saxophonist.
But Nikki Yanofsky has a way to top them all when she walks out on the celebrated
stage on April 21.
"Massey Hall is my first solo show officially as an adult," she says perkily on the
phone from her Montreal home sounding all of 10 years old. "And I am aware that so
much history has gone on there."
Her high and perky "real" voice takes some getting used to particularly for anyone
familiar with her sultry contralto singing and her unfazed-by-anything professional
aplomb. Then again Yanofsky has been zooming along the learning curve, even appearing
at Carnegie Hall the day she turned 14, with the crowd singing "Happy Birthday" to
her. (By next month, she'll be joining popera stars Il Divo on their Canadian tour,
though she isn't confirmed for the May 19 date at the Air Canada Centred.)
But being 18 is different, she thinks. "Massey Hall is going to be the start of a
new look and new sound for me," she continues. "I know from being an opening act
there how cool it is particularly backstage. But this time the whole point of the
Massey Hall concert is to bridge the gap between the jazz I do and contemporary music.
The show is going back to how I started, when I was singing Motown before I got into
jazz."
For someone billed as a jazz prodigy, any move beyond jazz must be considered an
audaciously risky move by Yanofksy and her manager parents, Elyssa and Richard Yanofsky,
himself a jazz musician. Until now Nikki has garnered press worldwide as the era-defying
jazz wunderkind who dazzled the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2006 opening for the Neville
Brothers, knocked the rest of the jazz world on its ear with the 2008 release of
Ella... Of Thee I Swing, her tribute to the late Ella Fitzgerald, and who gained
international attention with her jazz groove "O Canada" -- as well as "I Believe,"
which became utterly ubiquitous in Canada -- at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
The very idea of channelling Ella in the first place -- a 13-year-old Yanofsky is
included on Verve Records' We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song 2007
compilation -- was taken as a particularly plucky career move given that Fitzgerald
is considered to be the very definition of the jazz singer. Some jazz diehards feel
that Yanofsky's scat-perfect reiteration of "Airmail Special," Fitzgerald's signature
improvisational wordless solo -- her "canny mimicry," was how one writer discreetly
described Yanofsky's version -- may have been a way of showing up Fitzgerald, who
wasn't considered to be precociously talented being all of 17 when she first started
singing at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem.
The truth is less complicated. Yanofsky has the benefit of perfect pitch, as did
Ray Charles, Glenn Gould and a select group of other musicians who seemed to naturals
from the start. So for Yanofsky, having the chance to intellectually absorb the glorious
tonal cloudburst that Fitzgerald makes of "Airmail Special" was tantamount to giving
a diamond junkie the key to Tiffany's for a weekend -- the time it took Yanofsky
to copy Fitzgerald's riffs.
"I'd always been singing," Yanofsky says. "To me scat singing and singing are the
same thing. But here was a song you had to stick with. And since then 'Airmail Special'
is the one the crowd likes the most."
Growing up she had to contend with two older brothers who were forever getting her
to listen to the Beatles and the rest of that,"older music" as she calls it. Family
talent shows with friends and cousins made Yanofsky stage-smart early on.
"I don't know if there were any 'aha' moments when it came to my singing," she goes
on. "I compare it to a kid growing older. You don't realize that over the years than
the kid is a foot taller.
"I do know that songs definitely change as you grow up with them. When I was younger
I had a kind of carelessness in my singing because I was just singing a song that
I loved. But I've noticed that my voice has changed in the past two years. I am sure
it will get a little deeper when I am in my 30s."
A number of heavyweight reputations are riding on Yanofsky's chances of becoming
the next big thing out of Quebec after Celine Dion. Nikki, her first studio album
released in 2010 had Phil Ramone listed among its producers. (Among Ramone's past
clients are Billy Joel and Tony Bennett.) Ramone reportedly saw the need for Yanofsky
to find a way beyond being a novelty jazz act.
"The likable Yanofsky has stardom written all over her," wrote Guardian critic John
Fordham in 2010, who added: "The issue for her future will be whether she lets the
industry smooth her off into just another jazz-inflected pop star, or she puts all
of that formidable talent to more personal use."
Yanofsky understands the concern. Better, she understands what she doesn't understand
-- yet. She jokes that for years she's been singing "At Last," the soul-tearing piece
defined by Etta James, to her dog. She realizes there are questions about her singing
"God Bless the Child," which when performed by Billie Holiday, its co-writer, takes
on the gravitas of a southern gothic novel.
"I'm the most boring teenager in the world," says Yanofsky. "I don't drink. I don't
smoke. So maybe I'm lucky not to have a sob story. Maybe I've not gone through the
things the writer of that song did. But it's still up for grabs to sing."