Photo taken by Sean Fay (such a big crowd I couldn’t get a great angle) of Nicole Zuraitis (Piano), Edan Mareem (Guitar), and Dan Pugach (Drums)

Sean Fay: Hello I am Sean Fay. This is 89.1 FM WNYU, live all the time on WNYU.org and this is jazz died. I’m here with Nicole Zuraitis who just had a spectacular performance at the Newport Jazz Festival and how would you like to introduce yourself?

Nicole Zuraitis: Oh my goodness I’m Nicole Zuraitis and I love music but more importantly I’m a, I guess you would say now, Grammy-winning jazz singer-songwriter, producer, arranger, and pianist.

S. F.: Congratulations!

N. Z.: Yeah, geez louise!

S. F.: And who are you performing alongside?

N. Z.: Those are not only my band but my dear friends. It was Edan Mareem on the guitar, Sam Weber on the bass, and Grammy-nominated arranger-composer Dan Pugach on the drums.

S. F.: Awesome and how do you get in the right mind state before you take the stage? How do you prepare, any rituals or do you just go for it?

N. Z.: I mean as a vocalist I definitely have some vocal rituals, that you could call them ticks almost because I want to check my vocal range. Because in my set I don’t just sing one octave. I kind of span between three octaves so I have little ticks where I go through my range a couple of times to make sure it’s there. And then I talk down the set with the band. And because I’ve played with them for so many years and they have it all memorized—you know, we’re not a pickup band—we’ve been working for many years, we kind of roll with that and it’s a beautiful thing.

S. F.: Awesome and is the Newport Jazz Festival a noteworthy destination for you and why?

N. Z.: Ooh! This is a hundred percent a bucket list moment. The artists who have played here before are people that I’ve revered and admired my entire life. I’ve transcribed them, I’ve watched their sets at Newport. It’s honestly one of my top things that I’ve ever done.

S. F.: And what cities would you say have influenced your sound or do you have any places you really love to perform at?

N. Z.: Oh my gosh, I love that question. Cities that influence my sound… I mean, I live in New York City so New York City—you know, it’s grit, it’s grime, and it’s great. Ha! I never said that before but I’m gonna keep that. Something about the struggle—the inherent struggle—with living in New York combined with the audacity to follow your dream of music in New York City definitely sets me up for, I think, a very specific sound. Like, my entire band wore black. We were channeling New York. But I also have the good fortune of living in Connecticut—I grew up in Connecticut—and I live by the beach so I also love to sit in that space as well, you know?

S. F.: Awesome and are there any places still left on your bucket list that you absolutely have to perform at at some point in your life?

N. Z.: Carnegie Hall. And I’d like to start doing the festival circuit overseas. I think I’d love that. But any audience that—you know, performing is an interaction with the audience for me and I think one of the lost art forms in jazz is the entertainment, and I love to make the audience feel at home. So it doesn’t matter where I am, any audience that’s gonna be with me is gonna feel like family.

S. F.: Awesome and this next group of questions is gonna be about soundscapes, which I’ll define sort of as the albums, the people you’re around, whatever you go to first when you put on your headphones. So, what sort of soundscape did you grow up in and sort of where are you from and what was your musical involvement there?

N. Z.: That’s a beautiful question. I’m a very eclectic soundscaper. I think that’s been both my Achilles’ heel and also my gift to be unique. For many, many years I found that because I listened to a wide variety of music growing up—everything from rock to soul to musical theater to opera to jazz to folk to songwriter to pop—I would always think to myself, well, geez-louise, Jack of all trades, master of none. But what I learned is that it just took me a little bit of a longer time to find my own sound that was unique and not just copycatting other people that came before me.

S. F.: There’s a second line to that idiom too and I can’t remember it for the life of me right now, but it’s a “Jack of some trades is better than none,” something like that. And how would you describe your current soundscape? What are you listening to as of late? Who are some of your bigger influences?

N. Z.: I’ve always been influenced by the storytellers, so I love me a good vocal storyteller. I grew up listening to like Ella, Nina Simone, Carol King, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, but I also love, love, love bands that had like a big sound—Earth, Wind & Fire, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen. And then instrumental music, I love like Miles Davis, Chet Baker—when he sang or played, it was just epic. And then currently I love things like Sara Bareilles and anything with a good groove behind it.

S. F.: Awesome and a lot of musicologists have been using the same four or five words to describe jazz and its subgenres for the past two decades. If you were to name your own subgenre, what would you name it?

N. Z.: It’s funny you ask because I’ve been wanting to rename vocal jazz for many years because I do feel like there’s a stigma where vocal jazz—you are expected to swing. And I understand that jazz is a tradition and I’ve put many, many hours and many, many years learning that language. And now that I have the language, I can at least babble like a baby. I would like to have a different genre, a subgenre. Sometimes I call it like alt-pop, alternative vocal jazz, what’s the word I’m looking for? Intelligent pop, haha, vocal—you know, we have like contemporary instrumental but do we have a contemporary vocal music? I don’t know, we should.

S. F.: We should. And up next we’re gonna go to some off-beat questions, not really related to music all that much. What is a movie you can always rewatch?

N. Z.: Would I be the lamest person if I said I’ve never rewatched a movie since I was in high school? And even lamer—what I did rewatch was “Billy Madison”. And Narnia, “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Rats of Nimh”. I haven’t rewatched movies since then. I actually don’t even watch movies, but I should. I think it’s time for me to have a break. I haven’t really taken a break in a couple of years. It’s time.

S. F.: Okay, and up next, if you’re on the streets of New York and you want food from a truck or a cart, what type of food are you going for first?

N. Z.: I have to be really hungry to do that. I have to be on the verge of starving, but I would probably go for halal in the 50s on 52nd Street. I used to work at a club playing background music around there and I used to always go get halal from the Halal Guys late at night on my way home to Brooklyn.

S. F.: And if you’re going out in New York, what’s your go-to venue or some of your favorite venues around the city?

N. Z.: I love the West Village. I just love the energy of it. So, you know, I could always start at Small’s and Mezzrow, but then I like to go places like Groove, Café Wah, The Fat Cat—places that you can dance, not just listen to music.

S. F.: That’s my biggest complaint with some of the New York jazz clubs—there’s no space to dance. And then I know you don’t go to food trucks, but if you go to bodegas, do you have a go-to deli or bodega order?

N. Z.: I grew up playing sports and what I always used to do with my dad is he would go get a sub, so I’m definitely—I’m like a turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo, hot sauce, splash of vinegar, pickle, side of chips.

S. F.: Awesome, you got it down. And what’s your go-to drink? You gotta have a bev.

N. Z.: Depends on my mood. Like right now I could really go for an espresso martini. If I’m trying to be classy, I’ll do a dirty martini—extra olives. And then if I’m trying to last the whole night, I’ll drink a nice tequila. And if it’s non-alcoholic, a flat-white oat cappuccino.

S. F.: Nice. And what do you think is the best physical medium for music? Is it CDs? Is it tapes? Is it vinyl?

N. Z.: I’ve been saying for many years that I think CDs are gonna come back because I put a lot of time and effort into making my CDs. You know, it’s a digi-pack, six—we have, you know, six pieces of cardboard that roll out, but also I put liner notes with all my lyrics. I think that there’s something to be said, and I remember being a kid with vinyl and cassette and CDs, and holding it in my hand and reading along with the lyrics, as opposed to reading along with your phone where, like, you get a notification and you’re like, oh, what did my blankety-blank do on Instagram? It’s better, you can really focus when you have a physical product.

S. F.: I’ve also noticed a lot of hip-hop artists aren’t putting their lyrics out online, they’re taking them all down. Yeah, there’s one artist I like a lot, Mach-Hommy, and none of his lyrics are online, so I haven’t bought any physical stuff from him, but I hope they are, because I’m trying to figure out what he’s saying. And walk me through your creative process—what are some of the first steps or ideas you take when you want to make something or record something? Who are the first people you maybe reach out to?

N. Z.: Well, first I have to live with it long enough that I’m not embarrassed to show it to people. And then I have my band. Like, I’m so lucky that we—we used to play at the 55 Bar in Greenwich Village, right next to the Stonewall, for seven years, once a month. That was like our stomping ground where we could try out music. And then it closed during the pandemic. So now, like, I still bring it to my band because they know me and they know my sound and we’re able to kind of expand from there.

S. F.: Awesome. And do you have any advice for young musicians, especially those in New York trying to—

N. Z.: Oh yeah, man, it is a marathon, it is not a sprint. Do not look at TikTok as a gauge of whether or not you are gonna be famous or not. Do not look at your follower count. Engage in the social media, but it’s not the end-all, be-all. The more important thing is that you make music that is unique and you find a way to make a living. And if you’re crazy enough to stick around like I did and do it for 15 years in the background, then sometimes you’ll go and win a Grammy when you’re 40 years old.

S. F.: Yeah, no, that’s my perspective. I want a product and then a platform.

N. Z.: Amen! make something that you can stand behind. And sometimes when you’re young, you don’t have anything to say yet. I had nothing to say. People were like, “Oh, it took you so long, you’re a late bloomer.” I’m like, “I don’t know anything, I had nothing to say.” Now I have a lot to say. Right? Isn’t that right, Sean?

S. F.: Well, you’re getting it all out there. And finally, is jazz dead?

N. Z.: Hell no, absolutely not. God, I mean, jazz is dead is cool in LA, like, they took that slogan and ran with it, which makes it cool. But no, jazz isn’t dead. I think if anything, pop music is leaning back towards jazz because people are bored. People are bored with the mundane, they are bored, and they should be terrified of AI. And part of my next record will be exploring whether or not, like, can AI really improvise? That is so amazing to watch as a human being, like, what is it about music that is actually something to be revered that’s humane as we are, like, encroached on by AI? So, jazz is not dead, and jazz is one of the only reasons I think we might not get completely consumed by AI.

S. F.: That’s a fascinating perspective because I haven’t thought much about how AI could impact the music scene, but it’s-

N. Z.: -it’s very terrifying. There are ways that we can embrace it, but I am convinced that the humanity and the catharsis so far is the only thing that separates us between that and a robot.

S. F.: I saw this group of Berkeley students a while ago who were dedicated to using AI to copyright every possible four-bar phrase so that no one could ever try to copyright music in the future. I need to find out what became of that, but it was an interesting—

N. Z.: I hope they went to jail.

S. F.: And last but not least, anything you want to promote?

N. Z.: Yeah, sure, I mean I would love people to stay in touch. I’m Nicole Z Music, Nicole Z Music on Instagram, NicoleZMusic.com. We got a big band album coming out with my husband and I that proceeds go to Pitbull rescue. It’s called Bianca Reimagined. And then I’m already working on my next album, so stay in touch. My Instagram is ridiculous—it’s either super fun or super silly and doofusie, so stay in touch with me.

S. F.: Amazing. Thank you so much for your time, it’s been great having you here.

This was recorded live at the 2024 Newport Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 3rd. Broadcast on 89.1 FM on Thursday, August 8th for ‘jazz died??’.