Octave Records’ latest, Louisa Amend Quartet Live at the Muse Performance Space is sure to delight jazz fans and audiophiles alike with its beautifully-recorded songs, captured live in an intimate setting in extraordinary Pure DSD audio quality. The debut album from vocalist Louisa Amend blends Great American Songbook standards like “Time After Time” and “The More I See You” with adventurous choices such as Joni Mitchell’s “Michael from Mountains,” a vocal rendition of “Keith Jarrett’s “Country,” and a Louisa and Tom Amend original, “Labor of Love.”
Louisa Amend Quartet Live at the Muse Performance Space was recorded on location at the Lafayette, Colorado venue and features Louisa with Tom Amend on piano, Gonzalo Teppa playing upright bass, and Braxton Kahn on drums. The album showcases the warm sonic environment of the Muse and the easy, familiar interplay between the musicians with remarkably lifelike sound and presence. The album was recorded by Paul McGowan, with Paul and Tom Amend doing the mixing. Terri McGowan and Jessica Carson assisted in the production duties, and the album was mastered by Gus Skinas.
A Geffel UM 930 large capsule condenser mic was used for Louisa’s vocals. Tom’s piano was miced with two AKG C214 condensers, and the drums were captured with two of the same for the overhead mics, along with Beyer Dynamic mics for the snare and kick drum. The album was recorded with Octave Records’ custom-built Pyramix-based 16-channel DSD 256 rig.
Louisa Amend (with Tom Amend in the background). Courtesy of Michael Allan Photography.
Louisa Amend Quartet Live at the Muse Performance Space leads off with a swinging take on the classic “If I Should Lose You,” where all the sonic and musical elements of the album are immediately showcased. Louisa’s singing is sweet and inviting, Tom Amend’s piano has stunning harmonic texture, clarity, and attack, Gonzalo Teppa’s bass occupies a distinct presence in the soundspace and holds down the music with articulation and authority, and Braxton Kahn’s drums span the sonic range from the powerful dynamics of the kick drum and toms to the spaciousness of the cymbals. Next is “You’re Everything,” written by Chick Corea and lyricist Neville Potter. The band delightfully capture’s the song’s breezy forward motion and lyrical optimism.
The quartet shifts into ballad mode with the 1934 jazz standard “My Old Flame,” featuring a superb solo by bassist Gonzalo Teppa and some understated brush work by Braxton Kahn. Joni Mitchell’s “Michael From Mountains” follows, a song that feels like it’s tailor-made for Louisa and the group, from the cascades of Amend’s piano notes to Kahn’s cymbal work, using mallets and sticks to create a variety of airy tones.
Among the many other highlights of the album are the bouncy version of George and Ira Gershwin’s “Soon,” featuring another excellent bass solo by Teppa; the original song “Labor of Love,” which sounds like it could have been written in the 1960s or yesterday and features some exceptionally dynamic drumming; the deep groove of Allen Toussaint’s “With You in Mind,” the relaxed beauty of the bossa nova classic “Dindi,” and a jazz-flavored rendition of “The More I See You.” “Invitation” by Paul Francis Webster and Bronislau Kaper find Louisa and the band navigating through shifts in time and feel, including an extended Braxton Kahn drum solo that is as musical as it is demanding of an audio system’s capabilities. Louisa adds lyrics to Keith Jarrett’s “Country” and Kenny Barron’s “Sunshower,” to transform the songs into something entirely new and compelling. The audience can’t help but applaud during solos and at the end of the songs, which only adds to the feeling of being there with the musicians as they’re playing. At one point someone yells out, “Whooo!” – and in light of the performances and sound quality, it’s easy to hear why.
Louisa Amend Quartet Live at the Muse Performance Space features Octave’s premium gold disc formulation, and the disc is playable on any SACD, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player. It also has a high-resolution DSD layer that is accessible by using any SACD player or a PS Audio SACD transport. In addition, the master DSD and PCM files are available for purchase and download, including DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64, and DSDDirect Mastered 352.8 kHz/24-bit, 176.2 kHz/24-bit, 88.2 kHz/24-bit, and 44.1 kHz/24-bit PCM. (SRP: $29.)
I spoke with Louisa Amend about the making of the album.
Frank Doris: Can you tell us something about your musical background?
Louisa Amend: I graduated from the University of Northern Colorado with a degree in music education, and I spent a lot of time involved in the vocal jazz program and groups that were included at the university, along with doing a lot of classical singing as well. But once leaving school I found a lot more opportunities to sing in more of the jazz style, and spent a lot of time really digging into it and like many others, trying my best to learn and study and grow from all those who've come before us.
Moving to Denver was wonderful because I was able to really grow and get the opportunity to play with so many different people with different beautiful musical ideas and different backgrounds. I'm so fortunate that my husband Tom (Amend, Octave Records artist) is my other half, and we're able to do so many great things together. And then I'm a very happy teacher of piano and voice students. A lot of them are kids in elementary school. It's really great for me to work one-on-one with kids in a very creative way and help them feel the inspiration of music.
FD: I might be getting off-track a little bit, but what's it like being playing with somebody who you're also married to?
LA: For me, it's just a really big gift to have someone to make music with within the walls of my home. I feel like we've come to know each other's musical thoughts very well. And a lot of times that ends up in this beautiful synergy between the two of us, and that's probably one of the more magical things about being able to make music with him. And also, we do a lot of writing together, which is a really fun and unique thing we never expected to end up doing together, but has been a really great pairing of our skills and ideas coming together. I mean, we don't see eye to eye on everything.
FD: You…
LA: Can't.
FD: It would be no fun if you did!
Have you been playing with the band for a while?
LA: I don't think the four of us had ever played together before [recording this album]. We did a rehearsal because it was very important for the music to go well and be expressed and for them to kind of know what perspective I was coming from. But I've played with each of them individually in different formations so many times, I just had this feeling that it'd be a really great combination of people.
FD: How did you pick the songs
LA: I was trying to think about what music I wanted to share. A lot of these were songs that have always just felt like a good setting of lyrics or good melodies or having a lot of heart behind the storyline. Telling stories is really one of my things I am looking for the most. And so, within these songs, most of them have a really strong story line or feeling. I wanted [the album] to be a selection of different feelings, because I feel like I love and appreciate so many of these different varieties of songs.
FD: How did you get the idea to write lyrics for the two songs that were instrumentals?
LA: For “Country,” that Keith Jarrett tune – I kept hearing that song played by different musicians. It just had such a special melody to me that every time I heard it, I [felt] like, that song has some words. It feels like it's craving something to say. I felt the inspiration to add a little story, about this young girl who's living in the country growing up next to the mountains and next to the river, and this beautiful nature. And this feeling of how, if she keeps on believing in what might come next, how she will see past her own corner of the country and [dream] of what might happen next. But then, as she grows older, having this impression remain of what it felt like to be in her own little corner of the country.
With “Sunshower,” a couple years ago Kenny Barron came and played this really beautiful concert, and I [heard] “Sunshower” for the first time at that concert and feeling the same thing, that it just could really flourish with some words. So I looked at it through the lens of it [being both sunny and raining], and what it might be to have a person embody the feeling of a sun shower, and how someone can still shine through all of the storms of life and be a beautiful sunny presence around others.
FD: How did you and Tom write “Labor of Love,” the original song on the album?
LA: Tom and I had a moment where we experienced a great loss, and that song came out of it. It was a very great therapeutic experience, getting a chance to write those feelings down and then sharing them with other people. We had friends and family in the audience, and it was good to share that with them. If you listen, you’ll hear a little bit more emotion in my voice on that song.
FD: Who were some of the artists who you liked growing up, and some artists of today?
LA: I was into jazz music as a teenager. My father was very much into Irish music and bluegrass, so I listened to a lot of that as well, and what was popular at the time on the radio. I [like] the greats. Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn were especially very important to me, [and] Nancy Wilson. As time passed, many other people in the jazz realm. Dinah Washington, I had a really great moment digging into her and her music.
Carmen McRae is my favorite jazz vocalist currently. I love her expression and her ability to tell stories with her singing, and that's something I've really taken from her and aimed to do myself. She was so thoughtful about which songs she sang. I had the pleasure of working with Eric Gunnison. He was Carmen McRae's last piano player, and he has so many stories and insights into her as a person and musician. I did a little residency of her music for a couple of years in a row, and we were able to use her actual charts. Eric was the piano player who carried the charts.
I am really loving the music of Esperanza Spalding. And Joni Mitchell; both of them are really creative songwriters. And as I've been getting more dedicated to my own music that I'm writing and my own stories that I'm telling, it's been really fun to listen deeply to their repertoire, to see what I can learn and grow from and see their version of writing music and telling stories in a very creative way. Both of them have had a lot of emotions where they moved from different styles and grew in different ways. That's something I really admire.
FD: I think jazz is really challenging to play because of the spontaneous improvisation. The musicians walk into the studio or onto the gig and it’s, OK, here we go. There might be some scary moments where you feel like you’re walking a tightrope. And then there are moments where you listen back and you say, “wow, how did we do that? What did we just do?”
LA: And isn't that the truth?
FD: I ask every Octave Records artist this: what did you feel like when you listened to the album being played back and sounding as good as it does?
LA: For me, it's interesting because it just feels like [listening to] a live performance. So it's not the same as being in the studio. In the studio, you’ve got the headphones and you have a real good and clear response to what you're doing, and you can hear yourself so clearly and hear everyone else. And it's a very different experience to do it live.
FD: Most people don't know that reproduced sound can sound that good. They’ve just literally never heard anything like it.
LA: Every tiny detail.
FD: Some musicians are a little thrown by it. But sound quality like that really makes you feel like you're witnessing the performance. You're there with it.
LA: That's a very special thing.
