Hilary Kole, the jazz vocalist extraordinaire who has performed at legendary venues like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, sits down at the corner of a bar, yet she's glowing as if the curtain was about to open on one of those world-famous stages.
That's because she's telling us about "A Self-Portrait," her soon-to-be-released sophomore album, a work that comes after a victorious legal battle to reclaim her recording career and is the next big step for a performer already lauded as both "sultry" and "poised" by the New York Times in a review of a performance preceding the release of her 2009 debut album, "Haunted Heart."
The excitement Kole exudes is mixed with a sense of relief, anticipation and letting go. After laboring over "A Self-Portrait," it's now out of her hands and ready for the public's ears - and if there's any more tweaks she'd like to make, well, it's too late now.
"You can't change it. It is what it is, and it lives in that moment," she says during an exclusive interview with HNGN.com just before a performance at Café Noctambulo at Pangea in New York's East Village. "You learn to live with that."
In conjunction with the interview, HNGN.com is also exclusively premiering "God Give Me Strength," a track from "A Self-Portrait." The song was originally recorded by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach for their 1998 collaborative album "Painted From Memory." "A Self-Portrait" will be released Oct. 15.
The 14 tracks on Kole's new album represent a wide swath of the American songbook, from rock-era classics like Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide," Joni Mitchell's "River," Paul Simon's "Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover" and The Beatles' "And I Love Her" to standards including George and Ira Gershwin's "The Man I Love" and closing track "Some Other Time," from the Leonard Bernstein musical "On The Town".
While the songs on the record traverse a broad terrain of musical flavors and eras, Kole followed strict criteria when selecting the songs, which helps infuse "A Self-Portrait" with a sense of continuity despite the somewhat disparate material.
"The song has to intrigue me as a listener, and I have to have a great deal of respect for the melody," she shares.
Calling the aptly-titled "A Self-Portrait" "by far the most personal record" she's made, she alludes to the past three years of her life, when her recording career was put in serious doubt after a personal and professional relationship went wrong. In 2011, she sued her ex-fiance John Valenti, the owner of New York jazz club Birdland, in order to extricate herself from contracts with Valenti and his management company Jayarvee Inc. Kole prevailed on a summary judgment ruling in New York state court, and an appellate court upheld the decision. Kole had regained her freedom to release music without Valenti and Jayarvee's involvement.
"I was in a dark place when I wasn't sure if I could continue," Kole says. "You can't be a recording artist if you can't record. You can still perform, but it's like being an actor that's not allowed to be in movies."
Despite some of the source material, "A Self-Portrait" is a jazz record at its core, which you can hear in Kole's vocal phrasing and the musical accompaniment. To that end, she said she had previously avoided taking on music from the folk and rock era, but she "got to the point where I could bring something to it."
"I think these are the next standards," she says, referring to the work of artists like Mitchell, Nicks and Simon, adding, "To limit yourself as an artist is a very strange thing. It's too hard for me to choose."
For "A Self-Portrait," Kole returned to New York's Nola Recording Studios, where she completed her first demo recording when she was only 14. At Nola, which has since closed, she co-produced the album with Jim Czak, whose mixing and engineering credits include albums by The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Michael Feinstein and John Pizzarelli. Kole elected to eschew studio wizardry and instead went for a live sound, recording her vocals along with her longtime bandmates Paul Gill (bass), John Hart (guitar) and drummer Aaron Kimmel, along with pianists Tedd Firth and John DiMartino and cellist Agnas Nagy. And "there was no Auto-Tune," she proudly points out.
While Kole has built a resume that could turn most performers green with envy, she seems to appreciate each accomplishment and speaks with a sense of wonder when describing some of the high points. Recalling the first time she went to rehearse at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops and Feinstein, the singer says "I just started crying."
"It was so emotional. It was the most beautiful place, and it also feels like you're in outer space. There's a spotlight on you and you're looking into this black abyss. And then you're in a place like this," she says, gesturing to the jazz club where she'd take the stage later in the evening, "which is the exact opposite, and it can also be terrifying."
Having stared out into the abyss - both literally and figuratively, considering the dark and uncertain place she fell into just a few years ago - and into the faces of audience members just a few feet away in decidedly smaller, intimate rooms, it might be an understatement to remark that Kole has conquered both situations with admirable skill and grace.
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