Beth Arrison: Print

She's a young Diana Krall - with one key difference: Beth Arrison writes all her own material.

Sure, she could've recorded a bunch of standards like everybody else, but says, "My biggest passion in music is composing. It wasn't really a question for me."

The 24-year-old jazz singer laughs at the Diana Krall comparison, "yeah," but has to know it's inevitable. Any female jazz singer who also happens to play piano is automatically held up to the light cast by She Who Has Conquered Pop. Arrison has a little more Sade in her, and a smooth new album, Modest Charms, that would fit perfectly in the CD changer next to Krall's ubiquitous When I Look Into Your Eyes down at the local Starbucks.

Arrison performs her CD release tonight at the Yardbird Suite. They have coffee there, too.

Sultry, silky, seductive, smooth, pick your S-word to describe Modest Charms, the music ranges from gentle bossa novas to lazy ragtime to mild swing to tinkly wallpaper one might listen to over dessert in the lobby of the Westin Hotel. It's all very tasty with muted trumpet solos sprinkled here and there, spare arrangements, understated performances throughout. It would scream "mellow" if mellow could scream. An urgent whisper, maybe. In short, it could be a hit.

Arrison admitted she changed the album's original title - Cowboy Martini, a track from the record that has nothing to do with Brokeback Mountain - when she heard the final master and discovered to her horror that she didn't really like it.

This sort of thing happens all the time. You're just not supposed to admit it. You're supposed to bray to the press, "This is my best album yet!" Not Arrison.

"I think initially I heard it and I didn't want to hear it again," she says. "I wasn't very happy with it. I think it's something every artist goes through. You write it, it's very personal and I'm really critical of myself. It's my first time doing something and I always think there's room for improvement. But now, I've been able to step back from the whole project and say it's OK. And people have been responding to it well, so that's really helped my feelings towards it. I like it now. When I see someone responding to something I've written, that makes me happy. I know it shouldn't matter what people think."

No, but praise helps - after you've finished the record, of course.

Unlike Krall, Arrison is not limited to jazz. She's also known for making "house" music in the vein of Candy Dulfer. Asked why there isn't even a whiff of electronica on Modest Charms, Arrison replies it didn't even occur to her.

She laughs, "I guess I just keep my genres separate." Besides, the grant proposal to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts specified "jazz," and while she certainly could've got away with a few groovy loops, jazz is what it turned out to be.

Also, Arrison has been what she calls "jazz mode" for at least the last four years. She'd taken two years of piano at MacEwan College before applying for the degree program at Saint Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. She was in for a big surprise. Arrison sent a demo tape of her piano playing, on which she happened to be singing, then got a nice letter back.

"They naturally assumed that because I was singing I was a vocal major, so I accidentally got accepted into the vocal program. So I just went with it. It was good because I had an excellent teacher down there and also got to play in the big band, so it was like I was doing two majors."

This singer could really go in any direction. She also has classical background, as the ballet accompanist for the Edmonton Dance Centre, and she also travels regularly to Korea to manage an English teacher's program (interesting day job). She'll be there in June.

After that?

Someplace mellow, likely. In the right hands, Modest Charms could take her a long way.