Jesse Palter – Seeing the Light
by Karen Koski (originally published in Metropolitan Access magazine, Summer 2007)
“Don’t get me wrong – jazz is my love. Jazz is to me the most challenging out of all the genres,” Jesse Palter looks intently at me, her startling green/hazel eyes focused and fearless. “But I want to do it all.”
Anyone paying attention to Jesse in the last, oh, 22 years that she’s been on this planet should have no problem believing that. She’s been classically trained since the age of six, did musical theatre in middle and high school, and impressed the University of Michigan music faculty so much they created a program for her, allowing her to study voice with the classical teachers while studying theory, composition and horn with the jazz faculty. This is after working with such noted pop/rock producers as the Bass Brothers and Andrew Gold at the age of 13. In the last few years she’s been working the live jazz circuit with the Jesse Palter Quartet (Mike Jellick, piano; Ben Williams, bass; and Nate Wynn, drums with Keith Hall handling the out-of-state drum duties), honing her chops and capturing a few Detroit Music Awards along the way. And oh, yeah – she put out a stellar debut album in 2006, Beginning to See the Light, that mixes new takes on standards, jazz interpretations of pop tunes, and a couple of self-penned tunes. There’s no question Jesse knows what she’s here to do.
In person, she’s vital, intense, vibrant. We’re doing this interview in the middle of about three appointments, with a gig after all that, and a tight out-of-town weekend schedule looming, and… she’s a delight. She’s right here, concentrating on the moment, on the questions, giving her opinions and thoughts candidly and articulately. The summer is a headlong dive into writing, recording and touring, with a twelve-day residency in Colorado thrown in for good measure, and it’s obvious she thrives on every minute.
As we talk, we discover that we have a connection – her first voice teacher auditioned me for a music major slot when I went to university. So we both have an understanding of what studying music at the college level means – and I can tell you being a music major is a rigorous undertaking. Jesse agrees. “School was a lot of work. It forced me to be considered a musician – which is something I always wanted to be considered – in what is traditionally an instrumentalist’s genre. I wasn’t with other vocalists – I was forced to study with horn teachers and practice my licks – which is good. I do think that I missed the exchange with other vocalists [that a jazz vocal program might have given me], though. For a while, I turned off all my vocal records and just listened to instrumentalists – I wanted to only transcribe their solos and get into their heads. But then you turn on a Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, or Betty Carter record, and… you know they’re there for a reason, you know?” A singer is a musician – you must “think of yourself as an instrument, first and foremost,” Jesse echoes everything I was taught as well. This works across the board, no matter what genre you end up singing.
Jesse’s singing on Beginning to See the Light certainly benefits from the classical voice training, reaching to a shimmery purity from a silken purr, but her influences in delivery come as much from Broadway as jazz and opera. She is interpreting the lyrics, enacting them as much as performing them, and she utilizes the complete range of her voice in the service of the emotions she wishes to evoke. Jesse acknowledges the variety of influences in her work – “I’ve been classically trained since I was young, I grew up doing musical theatre – I’d love to do Broadway someday – I write pop tunes whenever I can, I went to school for jazz… and I’m from Detroit, so there’s all that blues, and funky Motowny thing… and it all shows up, definitely.” But no matter where she pulls her influences from, her love of jazz is evident as we speak. “Jazz is warts – no, jazz is, as one of my teachers says, mistakes. It’s a new perception of what some people might consider a mistake, regarding it as a signpost towards a new direction. Here’s a new road, let’s go down it and find out where it goes…” This is the passion and enthusiasm of someone who has found the perfect niche in life, the right fit, the right partner.
When I compliment her on the record, saying it doesn’t sound like a first album, she demurs slightly. “Thank you. It sounds like a first album to me… I’m very proud of it. We went into the studio to do a demo, and one of the things I love is the way you embrace spontaneity in jazz. Things were going so well, we decided to make a record out of the sessions! Five of the tracks on the record are one-takes. We had the band in for two full sessions, which is nothing, and then came back and did very minimal editing. What you get on the record is exactly what you were getting live at that point. Some of my friends listened to it and pointed out places where we could have fixed notes, but I really wanted it to be real.”
Not content with being a vocalist, Jesse writes as well. “I’ve been writing with a great pianist, Sam Barsh – we’ve been writing more mainstream fare. I don’t know how much of it is going to be on the next record, but there will be more originals. I wanted to simply introduce myself as a songwriter on the first record.” Jesse contributed two tracks, “Lovesick”, co-written with Jeremy Ragsdale, and the self-penned “Change of Heart”. “Lovesick definitely has a Stevie Wonder feel. You can hear Detroit in my music if you know your stuff,” she smiles. “Change of Heart – that one is really interesting – it’s a first take, totally live and unedited. But it’s not really how I wrote it; it was more of a pop tune at first. But it just worked like this for the album.”
The next record? “I am looking forward to the next record because there’s been so much growth in the last year, I can’t wait to get back into the studio!” While she’s recorded quite a bit of her pop/mainstream collaborations with Sam Barsh, she’s also laid down some of her jazz compositions recently, with celebrated bassist Luques Curtis (Sting, James Brown, Pat Metheny) sitting in on a session.
Jesse’s talent and drive haven’t gone unnoticed by the jazz labels – she’s done some well-attended showcases in New York, including one at the prestigious Blue Note. “That was humbling,” she remembers. “There’s definitely a vibe there – I can’t tell you how many ‘Live At the Blue Note’ records I have, so it was such an honor to play there.” When it comes to record contracts and the like, it’s some thing that Jesse doesn’t really worry about. “I’m just going to keep growing and keep learning and keep working – and that’s the kind of attitude I’ve been working on. Getting signed is something that will happen when it happens.”
Jesse Palter crosses the barricades of taste and genre like crossing the street, impressing those who listen with her undeniable talent. There is no doubt we will be hearing beautiful music from her for years to come.