A Different Take on Jazz with Alexis Lombre

Interview by Jaidah-Leigh Wyatt (@wyatt_______j)

Photography by Benoit Rousseau and provided by Montreal Jazz Festival

Montreal’s Jazz Festival attracts all sorts of characters from all over the world who are pushing jazz music into new directions, but Alexis Lombre has taken on a different approach to jazz in general, turning it into something completely her own.

Boasting an impressively vast range of genres in her short career thus far, Lombre’s music starts out as straightforward, traditional jazz before transforming into an experimental fusion, breaking boundaries (pun intended!), and creating a new sound. Her musical growth may be easy to follow (with her trying to incorporate herself into the jazz world before moving into her own sound) but Alexis has been writing experimental fusion works even while she was releasing her more contemporary jazz pieces. It seems like she has always been inventing something new and exciting with her music. You can’t help but cheer her on as she reaches new heights and continues sharing her sound all over the world.

Despite only being in her twenties, the accomplished artist has been writing and releasing music since she was in highschool, has been a part of several residencies and has been inspired jazz greats such as Gene Harris. Hailing from Chicago and its rich culture of jazz music, she takes pride in her identity and background, incorporating it into her music frequently, along with her emotions and current views of the world. Music is a process for her to uncover emotions, express herself and have fun! And with her hands-on approach to writing, producing and playing the instruments heard in her music, Alexis Lombre is truly doing it all.

I had the pleasure of speaking to Alexis about her musical journey, singles and relationship to jazz music as a whole.

Here’s what she had to say:

My first question for you is just to tell me about yourself in your own words! I’ve already read your bio but like, what’s a straightforward pitch about you as a person?

Yeah, so my name’s Alexis Lombre, I’m a pianist, vocalist, composer and producer and artist. I’m from Chicago. I currently reside in Los Angeles and yeah! I’m just a person who believes that, you know, my calling is keeping soul music alive. I believe that music is about how it makes you feel, not just about the notes.

Thank you! And my next question is, just getting right into it, how do you make jazz music! What’s the process like from composing and producing the music to playing and recording it - just tell me everything!

So for my first album, Southside Sounds, it was very straightforward. I set up piano, I wrote the songs based off of how I felt or based on my experiences. For example, I have a song called “I’m tired” and it’s a slow ballad because I was singing a lot and in highschool at the same time so I was tired! *laughs* so I wrote a slow song. And then, I wrote another song called “A Blues in Tyne” because I was transcribing some McCoy Tyner and his chords and chord progression were so bad that I was like “I want to try to do a whole song from it” and so it just lent itself to that. And then, say my other song “Shugar” is based off of the experiences of me growing up on the southside of chicago and, you know, playing in jazz clubs and playing in a lot of soulful places… a lot of the older folks who were in the audience would come up to me and be like “Come and give me some sugar!” So that was the whole jist behind that. There’s different reasons behind each song… but for say Come Find Me, that was a more spiritual aspect. I remember I was writing in the practice room of the college I was going to - The University of Michigan - and yeah it was like a spiritual revelation I had with God kind of telling me to come find him but (the) him that resides in me – if that makes any sense. And with Boundaries I wrote it because I was tired of my boundaries being infringed upon… What if boundaries was an earworm? What if the idea of boundaries was something that people could listen to nonstop? That was an earful but that’s my compositional process.

Boundaries was released as part of Apple Music’s Juneteenth Freedom 2024 playlist. Juneteenth has only recently become a recognized federal holiday even though it was celebrated here and there beforehand, but it’s such an important historical day in America so would you want to talk about the experience of creating music for it?

You know I just felt like it was something that was really aligned and when you think about boundaries in relation to Juneteenth - Juneteenth was the day when people say ‘We ain’t working no more. We ain’t working for free anymore okay?’ and I was proud to have something be associated and be released as something that had to do with Black freedom because I wrote that for my own sense of Black freedom. So yeah that definitely meant a lot for me that it was included in that. ‘Cause before I hadn’t released a song in about 3 years, so that playlist kinda gave me (incentive) to actually get something new out and Boundaries was perfect for it.

Okay thank you, and going back to your musical background. The spontaneous nature of jazz, as a multi-hyphenated artist as yourself, just seems perfect for you, but you’ve gone even beyond the loose constraints of jazz into something completely your own, something that can’t really be qualified into a specific genre. On your website you said that you’re looking to create music without boundaries so did you want to talk more about that?

You know it’s really interesting because a lot of songs I wrote all at the same time. Some songs I wrote on Southside Sounds which is a pretty much straight edge jazz album. You know I wrote it at the same time as other songs that are pretty genreless and I believe that all should be able to coexist and yeah I definitely want people who listen to me to know that I happily go in any direction and especially since moving to LA, I’ve been playing with people such as Kamasi Washington and Terrace Martin …and you know these are people who are multidirectional, Georgia Anne Muldrow another person who is multidirectional so even since I’ve lived in LA, my (idea of) what is possible has expanded so *laughs* I’m just tryna press a listening ear, just to understand that I plan on expanding the boundaries, and I don’t feel limited and I encourage the listeners to just take a journey with me.

Alright yeah! I did take a listen through most of your music. I do really like the mix of vocals and just the way you’ve been using music. I haven’t really heard anything like it and I’m always looking for more experimental sort of sounds and just different genres.

Thank you!

You’ve toured all over the world, you’ve been to several places. Right now you’re at Montreal Jazz Fest, then you’re gonna be heading to the states, and you’ll be in the UK for a bit so how is the touring life treating you! Is it something you enjoy? Did you always wanna go out and tour?

Yeah! You know I’ve always wanted to go out on tour, and I don’t think I’ve played internationally (since)… my last gig internationally, I was in Panama in January. So from January to July it’s like “Okay I haven’t been outside of the States in a while.” It feels good, it feels good to be out in the international streets! You know what I mean? So yeah definitely open to it as long as it’s done right. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun.

I always admired the well-traveled. I feel like it really impacts your work and it’s always nice to get to see different kinds of audiences. This next question also goes into travels: Can you tell me how growing up in Chicago and your general background has inspired your work? I can tell you’re really proud of your background and your history and I was wondering if any of the new places you’ve visited so far have also impacted your work similarly.

Hmmm.. yeah I mean Chicago was the whole reason behind my first album Southside Sounds. These are songs I wrote based on my experience living on the southside of Chicago and the reason why I named it Southside Sounds was you know Chicago is so often known for the sounds of gunshots and the sounds of ambulances and the sounds of police sirens, (so) I want to introduce them to the world of… you know Chicago has a profound musical heritage and I was inspired by greats such as Eddy Harris and piano greats Willie Pickens who’s an unsung piano giant from Chicago and there’s a whole history of… just a great culture in Chicago and I wanted to put a light towards that and towards what I was listening to in my upbringing. So lots of old soulful jazz records - was my favourite stuff. So I hope that makes sense. And Gene Harris, he’s from Indiana… or Michigan City if I’m not mistaken and I was hugely inspired by Gene Harris’s sample. He’s midwest but yeah.

Thank you! That was a really good answer. I haven’t been to Chicago before but I’m currently based in Toronto and the main sounds in our area (other than the TTC which is the Toronto Transit Commision, the subway and everything) are also like ambulances and police sirens, so I can understand trying to get that musicality out of the city and change the soundscape or the perceived soundscape rather, and be like “no THIS is Chicago sound”. So speaking of your first EP, I noticed that it didn’t include any vocals. It was just instrumentation, but your later singles like Boundaries and Come Find Me do include vocals. So how do you approach lyricism in your work? And how do you decide when it is not needed and when it is needed?

Yeah I think that it’s just a symbol of what I was doing at the time. I wrote Southside Sounds while still in highschool. I dropped it within, I think it was my freshman year of college. So during highschool I was very much wanting to be accepted as a straight ahead jazz musician, jazz cat, and you know I’ve always loved to sing I’ve sang since I was twelve but I felt like this false sense of wanting to be accepted by not singing, but when I got to college and you know turned 18/19 and I was like “Oh!” and exploring yourself as you do when you leave the house I realized “Oh I love to sing, it’s fun!” and I took some vocal lessons with George Shirley - a wonderful tenor. And he is a professor at the University of Michigan and he’s a legendary tenor, broke a lot of barriers for Black opera singers. And I took lessons with him and started to gain more confidence in my sound as a vocalist. And yeah, so I love to sing! I always love singing… And yeah you don’t hear more singing but it’s like balancing how much should I sing, how much should I play because when you have multiple things you can do, you wanna give people enough of what they enjoy.

I haven’t ever really tried writing lyrics before, but I can see how (for you) it’s more something that comes from the heart. There’s not this specific process which I think is really interesting. And my last question for you is what are you working on right now, and will we be seeing your second album in 2025?

Right now, I’m working on music. So basically, new music is absolutely on the way. I’ve mentioned a lot of the collaborators that I’ve been working with in LA and the music has taken an unexpected turn. You will definitely see some new releases before the end of 2025 and I encourage that all the readers and listeners stay tuned and follow my pages @alexislombre on Instagram and on Facebook and on Tiktok as well because that is the soonest that anybody knows about any releases that I drop. Sometimes a lot of the time I test teasers out on the audience to see what resonates with people before I drop and also I have a mailing list as well and you can find that on my website alexislombre.com and I hit my mailing list before I even hit the social media. So I encourage anybody who’s interested in my musical journey or any new music to check out those social platforms.

Alright! And I’ll be sure to share that with our audience. Thank you so much for your time and good luck at your show today!

Thank you! Thank you for your time today!

Bye bye!

BACK

Your cart is empty

Your cart

Estimated total