Caity Gyorgy: Hello! How Are You?
Her 5th album has all the fixings – birds, snail mail, tight arrangements, scat – and affirmations
In a recent interview for the CBC show Q, host Tom Power said to Caity Gyorgy, “I don’t know anything about scatting.” Gyorgy replied, “Have you ever tried it before?” Her quick, thoughtful reversal – as opposed to a perfunctory explanation – led to Power, to my delight, scatting a fiddle tune off the top of his head. Yes, he does know something about it, and Gyorgy is as attentive day-to-day through her remarkable young Canadian jazz career as she is on her records.
Gyorgy's fifth album as a leader, Hello! How Are You? indeed opens with some of her celebrated scat prowess on the title track, but it's as part of a refined shout chorus and trading section, not a full-chorus improvisation. She outlined to her hometown Calgary Herald how composing this song was one small, spontaneous piece of an ongoing videomaking process with drummer Jacob Wutzke: the same process that brought her onto the scene through the Lift a Day project.
Gyorgy has already recorded in ensemble formats ranging from a large band, like on her latest Christmas single which came out on November 1, to vocal-piano duo. This record presents her in the setting that most resembles hearing her in a club. It's just the piano trio and her, and the drums and bass keep things moving all the way to the medium-swinging blues of the last track.
In that Q interview, Gyorgy describes the gently rolling "Just My Luck" as "an ode to [her] dream life". Tonight, November 26, 2024, she plays Ottawa's Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre; on Saturday, November, 30, the Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon. She continues to Japan and to the U.S. over the next couple months. "It's not just luck to happen upon this situation," she sings. "Fortune struck after I had set my course."
Making an appearance on The Playful Musician with host Steve Davidson, Gyorgy talks about her love of "creative and exciting arrangements, and that’s what I want to hear when I go out to see and pay for live music, so that’s what I want to give people when they’re paying to hear me sing." "Baubles, Bangles, & Beads" is a wild swinging arrangement made possible by the precise drumming of Wutzke, who along with bassist Thomas Hainbuch has played on every Gyorgy record. Hainbuch's bass sound is pleasing as he solos with true straight-ahead vocabulary.
"Baubles" is one of three standards, along with "They Say It's Spring" and the super-slow ballad "It Never Entered My Mind". The rest are Gyorgy originals. Completing the lineup of her trio is Toronto pianist Anthony D'Alessandro, who interacts engagingly with the vocalist as no horns clutter the presentation.
Those of us lucky enough to be on Gyorgy's list know that she loves snail mail and delights in attaching personalized cards to physical copies of her work. Unlike "Postage Due" – track one from her first album – which teasingly discusses sending a letter, Hello! sees Gyorgy make multiple stops at her own mailbox. On the ballad "Familiar Face" she does a daily run to the post office, where the disappointment of not having any new mail hits just as hard no matter how frequently it happens. But there's always a flipside; on "Letter from the Office Of", she declares, "Please return to sender, I'm not interested in you!" On "Letter From", to me, her double-timing solo stamps her scat abilities even better than the uptempo and thesaurus-fun "Colloquially".
"I Regret to Inform You" appears to be a breakup and confession song, but it has a twist that speaks to Gyorgy's practice of self-assuredness while managing the pressures of the road she walks. ("Fly Baby", an ode to her favourite hobby of birdwatching, is another moment for affirmation.) The liner notes are in her own words; they are as straight-up as her social media stories about being caught off-guard by her songs in the grocery store or taking long walks to process it all.
There are no grant acknowledgement logos on the back of this CD; in that sense, Hello! has plenty in common with the passion projects of any musician you know in your local scene. Certainly the follow-on question, "How do you do?" is one that artists of all stages long to ask their audience as often as possible, seeking the direct connection that keeps the tank full of gas. No matter how rarefied it might feel, she's still doing just what we do.
released Aug. 9, 2024 | Buy CD & digital (Bandcamp) | Available on streaming
