{"id":25276,"date":"2019-11-22T16:19:17","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T21:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25276"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:19:26","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T21:19:26","slug":"juno-award-winner-laila-biali-brings-modern-jazz-sounds-to-cultural-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/juno-award-winner-laila-biali-brings-modern-jazz-sounds-to-cultural-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"Juno Award winner Laila Biali brings modern jazz sounds to Cultural Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Juno Award-winning singer Laila Biali has toured the\nworld, collaborating with the likes of Paula Cole and Sting \u2013 and this Friday,\nshe\u2019s bringing her modern spin on jazz to the Aurora Cultural Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A natural \u201cstoryteller\u201d who won the 2019 Juno Award for\nVocal Jazz Album of the Year, she tells The Auroran she is looking forward to\nconnecting with local audiences in the intimate ambiance of the Centre\u2019s Brevik\nHall, along with the other members of her jazz trio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSmaller, more intimate listening-style rooms that more\nclosely resemble a jazz club will feel more immediate to the audience, which\nthen results in more immediate feedback with the band,\u201d she says, adding the\n\u201cinteraction and interplay\u201d that happens between the band and the audience is\nsomething difficult to replicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Biali entered the music scene as a\nclassically-trained artist, but a classically-trained artist who was also\ninterested in pop and world music. When she began exploring jazz, she says that\nshe, like many artists, began emulating what she heard. Over time, she says,\nshe found the variety of music she listened to \u2013 and loved in her daily life \u2013\nstarted to impact her process as a songwriter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy husband \u2013 my boyfriend at the time — was really the\none who challenged me to stop worrying about the \u2018jazz\u2019 box and making sure\nthat what I was releasing fit into some tidy definition of \u2018jazz,\u2019\u201d she\nrecalls. \u201cJazz is a very broad style of music anyway. Jazz crossing over into\npop is becoming more and more common and I feel a little less alone in what I\nonce did. I learned to embrace the uniqueness of what I do and hoped that it\nmay also reach people who wouldn\u2019t typically consider themselves jazz fans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s exactly what has happened as Ms. Biali has\nattracted legions of fans who come at music from many different directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a genre-bending artist, she says she was quickly\ngreeted with a positive reaction \u2013 both from fans and her peers. The\nToronto-based singer\u2019s success has also stretched beyond Canada, where she has\nfound new fans in the United States, particularly in New York where she finds\nfans and artists alike are \u201cless concerned with labels to a degree.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But realizing her success and perfecting the formula took\ngoing a little too far, she said, citing her 2015 album A House of Many Rooms.\nIt\u2019s an eclectic album with slight elements of jazz on many of the songs, but\nit can also be defined as an \u201cindie-adult contemporary alternative pop record.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat one did kind of alienate some of my listeners and\nsupporters, and some people in the industry that are in the jazz world,\u201d she\nsays. \u201cIt was meant to exist in another space. What I realized with that is\nunless you\u2019re Sting it is very difficult as an artist who is still establishing\nthemselves to venture off into another territory. Even though that album was\nvery important to me, especially as a writer testing the boundaries and kind of\nventuring too far away from my roots as a jazz musician, it led to the\nself-titled release, which is the one that won the Juno. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was coming back to some key foundational components\nof jazz: improvisation and harmony that maybe pushes the boundaries a little\nmore. When I came back to that, there was still a little bit of pop sensibility\nto some of the songs that really felt like home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citing Sting as an artist who easily transitions between\nboundaries is a natural comparison as Ms. Biali counts the British icon as one\nof her chief influences. Having worked closely with him in recent years, she\nsays she didn\u2019t know what to expect when their paths first crossed, but she was\nstruck not only by his \u201cextraordinary work ethic\u201d but also his warmth as a\nperson and collaborator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe still has this very childlike spirit and fearlessness\nas he explores his views,\u201d she says. \u201cI still dream of writing music with him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canadian singer Paula Cole is another performer she looks\nup to. Working with Ms. Cole underscored for Ms. Biali the importance of\nfinding that work-life balance while also giving it her all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a performer, I have never seen anyone who gives as\nmuch as she gives on stage,\u201d says Ms. Biali, recalling one evening when she\ntook the stage with Ms. Cole in a 300-seat casino theatre in Las Vegas, only to\nbe greeted by a \u201csmall but mighty\u201d audience of 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will never forget watching how she responded,\u201d says\nMs. Biali. \u201cShe gave 200 per cent on stage for those 25 people in what kind of\nfelt like an empty theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she takes the stage at the Aurora Cultural Centre\nthis Friday, things promise to be considerably more intimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She plans on bringing to Brevik Hall songs from her most\nrecent release, favourites from what she describes as the \u201cGreat Canadian Song\nBook\u201d \u2013 including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI love human stories,\u201d she says of what gets her\ncreative juices flowing, \u201cthe stories of my own experiences and the people I am\nclose to. It\u2019s all storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Laila Biali Jazz Trio performs at the Aurora Cultural\nCentre this Friday, November 22 at 8 p.m. as part of the Brevik Hall Presents\nSignature Series. Tickets are on sale now online at auroraculturalcentre.ca or\nover the phone at 905-713-1818. <\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Juno Award-winning singer Laila Biali has toured the world, collaborating with the likes of Paula Cole and Sting \u2013 and this Friday, she\u2019s bringing her modern spin on jazz to the Aurora Cultural Centre. A natural \u201cstoryteller\u201d who won the 2019 Juno Award for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year, she tells […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/2019-11-21-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6zG","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 11:54:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}