“Lauren Lee is one of a new breed of singer-songwriter. She has all the bona fides of a traditional jazz singer and pianist, but she needs to do things her own way. As a singer and composer, she gives her imprimatur to cross-cultural experimentation and off-the-beaten-track forms of vocal expression, never straying far from the post-bop mother

“Lauren Lee is one of a new breed of singer-songwriter. She has all the bona fides of a traditional jazz singer and pianist, but she needs to do things her own way. As a singer and composer, she gives her imprimatur to cross-cultural experimentation and off-the-beaten-track forms of vocal expression, never straying far from the post-bop mother ship” — Suzanne Lorge, All About Jazz

More than a year ago, Lauren Lee began crafting what would become a gesture of deep consciousness. Set for release on April 30, 2021, via ears&eyes, The Queen of Cups — Lee’s third album as a leader — reveals a resonant solo recording of creative exploration and personal growth.

Vocalist, pianist, and composer, the St Louis native-turned-New Yorker combines deliberate, textured arrangements with stark spontaneity across 10 tracks of original music and enduring tunes. “I want people to rethink what it means to be a jazz vocalist and also what ‘solo piano record’ or ‘piano vocal record’ means,” says Lee, “for people to listen to something that makes them think. I want it to provide a nice backdrop for thoughts and not just be something in the background — not really provoking you to do anything.”

Before the pandemic hit, Lee recorded four original compositions at Wonder Park Studio alongside engineer Chris Kraznow. At the time, she sought to release them as an EP, arranging each track with lush, layered vocals and fibrous solo instrumental sections that further establish her distinct voice as a composer and highly imaginative orchestrator. Soon, however, she found herself rethinking another roster of repertoire she’d set aside for a separate trio album.

“During the lockdown, I got very comfortable with the idea of redoing the tunes that were intended for the trio record,” says Lee, “reconceptualizing and shedding them as solo tunes.” With would-have-been trio material reframed in her mind — and in her ear — Lee set a socially distant record date at Big Orange Sheep to lay down six more tunes in August and complete the tracklisting for The Queen of Cups. But after hearing the rough mixes, she reexamined her resolve to overdub. “The tunes that are ‘thinner’ are the ones I had reserved as ensemble tracks,” she says. “After the first day of recording, I listened back and thought, ‘Mmm — it doesn’t feel right. It feels disingenuous to overdub because that’s not what I had wanted.”

The ensuing album would present a sound spectra ranging from bare and intimate to richly orchestrated. “This piano vocal record doesn’t have those typical characteristics of maybe cocktail piano and standards,” she says. “It’s half new music and half standards — but not necessarily ‘vocal’ standards.” Emotional content Lee expresses across the recording, lyrically and musically, meets the unusual moment, as well. “I found that as I was listening back, the intention hadn’t started with the idea that I wanted to capture every emotion that I felt during the lockdown,” she says, “but it ended up turning out that way.”

To evoke and translate those shifting feelings, Lee relies on a variety of creative vessels comprising varied instrumentation — piano, Fender Rhodes, voice and Wurlitzer; instrumental and vocal interpretation — frequently improvised; and lyrics — both original and beloved. The decision to include a fresh arrangement of Ralph Rainger’s and Leo Robin’s “If I Should Lose You” emerged for Lee, in part, from a creative process of elimination. The pandemic had started refocusing her perspective on what she had in place of support, resources, and understanding: “I thought, ‘What if I didn’t have these things? This would be miserable to deal with alone.’” She found the sentiment she could deliver through Robin’s lyric and her interpretation of Rainger’s iconic changes aptly served her impulse.

Apart from solitude and contemplation, the lockdown afforded Lee plenty of time to attend what she’d been pushing aside in order to book gigs and write new music — more specifically, hours to spend learning Pat Metheny tunes. “Pat Metheny is really comforting to me,” says Lee. She chose “Unity Village” for inclusion because of its invitational harmony as well as its title. “The tune is beautiful. It makes such a strong statement. The changes have a lot of colors and leave a lot of possibilities for color. It paints a very hopeful picture to me.”

Heartily arranged, “Up In The Air” serves as an atmospheric inquiry into Lee’s daily tendencies. “I’m a really indecisive person,” she says. “That’s something that has both benefited and worked against me.” Composing the tune, she embraced her own artistic impulses along with the hope that perhaps listeners also might relate to experiencing the creative dichotomy of indecision.

While she hadn’t planned for The Queen of Cups to address mental wellness explicitly, Lee found many of the tunes and quite a bit of the lyrical content she composed cycling through concepts of personal proclivity, self-awareness, and self-acceptance. Against a steady heartbeat, “Another Reality” reflects her own struggles with self-confidence and overcoming imposter syndrome. “I can live in that other reality and not just daydream about being that person, inside my head,” she says.

The record closes with Lee delivering sonorous layered vocals across “Cocoon.” Beyond lyrics, the track’s haunting harmony and blossoming form evoke a sense of awakening and self-discovery. “When I was younger, I was really into pleasing people and trying to fit into these boxes, which is what I also thought I had to do if I wanted to be a working musician,” says Lee. Admittedly, she took some time and quite a bit of soul-searching to realize if she persists in her own expression, allowing her true self to emerge, she can make an honest gesture as she has done with The Queen of Cups.

Lauren Lee is a St Louis-born vocalist, composer, and instrumentalist based in New York City. Her foray into expressive music began when she was a teenager performing with the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, an experience that would lead her on a personal journey to find her own sound on the creative music scene. A desire for knowledge and distinctive sound has taken her all over North America and Europe as an enterprising vocalist, composer, and bandleader. Likened by New York Music Daily/Lucid Culture’s Alan Young to the music of pioneers who came before her, such as Carla Bley and Jen Shyu, Lee’s music has been described as, “equal parts hip jazz, Avant adventure, and… something completely different” (John Pietaro, Dissident Arts). Her work intentionally nestles between what exists and what’s to come; she’s often praised for her virtuosic improvisational abilities and her emotional and harmonic prowess as a composer. The Queen of Cups reflects Lee’s third release as a leader, following her acclaimed albums Windowsill (2019) and The Consciousness Test (2016).

Lauren Lee is a forward-thinking vocalist, pianist, and composer based in New York City on a wild goose chase of sorts to find her own sound in the adventurous music scene as a young innovator. On Windowsill, you’ll hear a different approach to composition and improvisation coming from this young vocalist where her melodies skip and bounce all

Lauren Lee is a forward-thinking vocalist, pianist, and composer based in New York City on a wild goose chase of sorts to find her own sound in the adventurous music scene as a young innovator. On Windowsill, you’ll hear a different approach to composition and improvisation coming from this young vocalist where her melodies skip and bounce all while being doubled by piano and voice, both under the control of Lee’s masterful touch. You’ll hear her doubling improvisations on piano or Fender Rhodes with her voice giving us a hint at some of Kurt Rosenwinkel’s The Next Step with an added freshness to the sonic palette. Virtuosic solos are common from bassist Marcos Varela as he’s presented with adventuresome harmony and daring percussive support.

The first “window” on this aural exploit was an actual journey to Switzerland, with Lee accepting an Artist-in-Residence opportunity in the Alps in a small town near the Italian border. The views alone would be enough to seduce anyone into sitting down and writing a few tunes, but it wasn’t just the mountains that sang in her mind. It was a reflection on the place she had just come from (she played the Stockholm Jazz Festival prior to arriving in Switzerland) and on the places, she would be heading afterward (Bormio, Milan, and Berlin, specifically). She had been to Berlin previously and was excited about what kind of adventures could lay ahead in these places that were not her home. We first get a glimpse of a soundcloud with long vocal tones before leaping into an angular call-and-response melody between a piano/voice combo against “So What-type” responses from the sax/bass. And just seconds later a new timbre is introduced in this just quartet line-up: flute. Loose backbeats change to and fro mixing where one might expect a downbeat, Lee takes a soaring piano solo seamlessly transitioning into a long tone, reaching-feel solo from Mulholland on alto sax gradually winding down for an explosive bass solo finalizing in yet another new timbre: clarinet. Mulholland and Lee’s musical chemistry is further emphasized on the outro, which blossoms into a multi-layered duet of differing vocal and woodwind textures. The outro gives us a glance into something we don’t often experience on jazz releases, but here offers yet another timbre of sorts when Lee allows herself to overdub layers of long vocal yearnings.

The title track’s ominous and simple beginnings lay the groundwork for an expedition where anything is possible, like opening your eyes on a fresh, new day. Lee’s delicate, wordless vocals, sometimes matching in perfect harmony with her piano playing, blend seamlessly into the instrumental texture of the music.

As she played out various scenarios in her mind, the tunes wrote themselves for Windowsill. The solitude of working in a small town in the Alps also created a bit of time for loneliness, longing, and reflection, which made their way onto tracks like So Long, a love song she wrote while being apart from her fiance for 6 weeks. That, coupled with the overall upbeat and audacious spirit of the album, has the power to take the listener on an emotional journey, be it through the mundane of everyday life, or on the adventure of a lifetime.

The title track, Windowsill, is based on what would be a whimsical, fictional journey of someone other than Lee, but instead her cat, Smeagol. The album got its name as she was writing the tune that would later be called Windowsill right after she returned home from touring in Europe, still fresh and eager to write. As she sketched harmonies at the piano, she watched her cat gazing longingly out the window with such hope and anticipation. She wondered if he was hunting on the savannah, like a big cat would, pouncing on the birds and squirrels outside, or eating an endless supply of meats that were just for him. When she sat down to write, he assumed his position in his perch, and thus, Windowsill was born. On this track, we get a daring and darting solo from Mulholland on clarinet and again the layering of Lee’s voice gives us a soothing pad of sounds, hinting at indie-pop star St. Vincent.

In ‘Get Off Me’, the 3rd track on the album and at just under the 4 ½ minute mark, we finally hear the seemingly composed solo with solid execution between the improvisation between two “personalities” of Lee, voice, and piano. She darts around both instruments doubling the solo in such a way that not usual and has a freshness that is fulfilling in the overall scheme of the album.

As the quartet plays on, experimenting with timbres and colors that take the listener to faraway and fantastical places all the way to the end with the appropriately titled closing track, She Who Journeys, one thing is certain: Lee has no intentions of slowing down.

Windowsill will be released on the indie label, ears&eyes Records, on October 18th, 2019.