Tracks
- Tick Tock
- Miles Between
- Passages
- Ghost
- Leo
- Rainy Season Love Affair
- G’ N’ K’
- Did It Did Or Did It Didn’t
- The Lighthouse
- Haiku New Love
- Home
- Auf Weidersehen, Goodnight
Performers
Nancy Erickson Lamont – vocals
Sean Jones – trumpet (8)
Brent Jensen – alto saxophone (4,6,7,8)
Jerome Smith – trombone (4,6,7,8)
Derek Smith – bass clarinet (4,6)
Josh Nelson – piano (3,5,6,8,10,11,12), keyboards (3), Hammond E (5)
Johnaye Kendrick – viola (2), violin and harmonium (9), backing vocals (9,10)
Jean Chaumont – guitar (10)
Shawn Schlogel – piano (1,2,4,7,9)
Chris Symer – double bass (1,2,4,7,9)
Michael Glynn – double bass (3,5,6,8,10,11)
Stefan Schatz – drums
Release date: May 10, 2024
Nancy Erickson Lamont grew up in Salem, Oregon, where she studied at Edmonds Community College with the renowned jazz vocal instructor Frank DeMiero. As part of the school’s vocal group, she had the opportunity to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival and the North Sea Jazz Festival. She began her career in the late 1980s, singing in a Seattle-based jazz band called After Hours. In 1993, she recorded a Christmas album titled Urban Christmas and sang backing vocals with various R&B and rock bands, including Freddy Pink and Nearly Dan (a Steely Dan tribute band).
She shared the stage with talents such as Ernestine Anderson, Mark Murphy, and The Four Freshmen before taking a break in 1994 to raise her children. She returned to the stage after a 15-year hiatus. She became a local celebrity in 2012 when she won the Seattle Kobe Female Jazz Vocalist Competition. The Japanese city of Kobe and Seattle have been sister cities since 2000, and the Seattle-Kobe Sister City Association sponsors the Kobe Jazz Vocal Queen Contest. The competition takes place in the Shinkaichi district of Kobe (the birthplace of Japanese jazz) and in Seattle. The Japanese winner travels to Seattle to perform, while the U.S. winner performs at Asahi Hall in Kobe.
Lamont is a seasoned jazz vocalist with an impressive vocal range who, for over three decades, has left a profound mark on the Seattle jazz scene.
She has released Through the Passages, her fourth studio album (fifth if we count Urban Christmas (1993)), following Prelude (2011), While Strolling Through the Park (2016), and Here & Now (2018).
Through the Passages is produced by the acclaimed vocalist and Grammy-winning, two-time-nominated producer Johnaye Kendrick, who also appears on several tracks playing violin, viola, harmonium, and singing backing vocals. The album also features some of the best jazz musicians from the Pacific Northwest: Josh Nelson (Natalie Cole, Sara Gazarek), Sean Jones (Jimmy Heath, Dianne Reeves), Shawn Schlogel, Chris Symer and Michael Glynn (Cory Weeds, Dave Grusin), and Stefan Schatz (Jon Hendricks, The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra).
The album consists of twelve original songs written by Lamont in collaboration with Schlogel and pianist Darin Clendenin. The lyrics are taken from poems Lamont has written over the past 10 years, a period during which she has experienced transformative events in her personal life, including a divorce, a pandemic, and finding new love with her husband, whom she married in 2021.
Thus, the songs on this album are inspired by Lamont’s life experiences and observations over the past 30 years.
The album opens with “Tick Tock,” an unsettling song that describes the anxiety brought on by the Covid lockdown.
It continues with “Miles Between,” where she describes the beautiful scenery during a road trip through Washington state.
“Passages” was written after the death of a friend, with each verse representing a season and the passage of time, ending with the cold stillness of winter.
Lamont composed and wrote the lyrics for “Ghost,” about the long-term relationship her now-husband had before they met.
The song “Leo” was composed by her friend Darin Clendenin about an ex-girlfriend. But Lamont interpreted it differently. Clendenin wasn’t initially thrilled with the lyrics, thinking they were about a guy named Leo, but he loved them once she revealed the song was actually about a golden retriever.
“Rainy Season Love Affair” tells the story of love between two women. It has a retro sound.
“G ’n’ K” are the initials of her daughter Kayla and her son-in-law Greg, a bassist who used to play with Lamont. The lyrics tell the story of their first meeting and falling in love. A pure jazz song.
Lamont directs choirs at a school in the Seattle area, and the title “Did It Did Or Did It Didn’t” comes from a phrase spoken by the school’s principal. A swinging tune.
“The Lighthouse” is inspired by the 2019 black-and-white film of the same name starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, which portrays the lives of 19th-century lighthouse keepers at a remote New England lighthouse battered by a violent storm.
Lamont asked her new husband, Dan, to write her some poems. “Haiku New Love” is based on those poems, written in a deconstructed haiku form.
Again, her current husband Dan is the subject of this ballad titled “Home,” in which Lamont describes the deep connection they share.
The album closes with the introspective and beautiful “Auf Weidersehen, Goodnight,” dedicated to her mother, who recently passed away. The song’s title is a phrase Lamont and her mother used to say to each other when her mother tucked her in at night and how, in the end, their roles were reversed.
Through the Passages is a beautiful album filled with intimate stories that speak to new love, motherhood, aging, divorce, and the state of the world.
La Habitación del Jazz