By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Jazz singing was part of Ellie Martin’s therapy when, at 25, she was diagnosed with cancer. Joan Russell, the owner of Murphy’s Place in Toledo, let her have weekly spot on the club’s stage.
Recently graduated a master’s degree in jazz from the University of Toledo, the singer appreciated the professional experience it gave her. “It helped me learn how to put together a show, or a set, and also the weekly practice of having a gig was great,” she said. “It distracted me from going through chemo.”
Having cancer is “a serious kick in the pants. Hey, we don’t know how much time we have left, just do what you love.” For Martin, that is performing jazz.
Songs shaped by that experience, her jazz education, and being the mother of two daughters, all shape her recently released recording, “Verdant.”
On Friday, June 2, at 7 p.m. Martin with musicians Ariel Kasler on guitar and keyboard, bassist Kurt Khranke, and Costa Rican multi-percussionist Olman Piedra, her husband, will perform music from the album at Arlyn’s Good Beer, 520 Hankey Ave., in Bowling Green. The Arlyn’s gig is part of an album release tour which includes a Saturday show at Lucille’s in Toledo.
Martin writes of “Verdant”: “This is an album of all original compositions and arrangements about my experiences as a woman, a mother, and a cancer survivor. The overarching message of this work is to live fully in each moment, and to lead with love in every step of life even in the most challenging of moments.”
“Verdant” is available on Bandcamp.
Martin started life as the daughter of two academics. That meant growing up both in Toledo and Portland, Oregon, and then heading north to study classical voice at McGill University in Montreal.
She already had an interest in jazz. The duets by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald were an entry point. “The music,” she said, “was so cool and different and so free.”
Her voice teacher at McGill, though, took a dim view of her interest in jazz. So, on the sly, she studied with Ranee Lee who taught jazz voice at the school.
“I loved that you could sing a melody a different way each time,” Martin said. “I loved the element of danger. … experimenting in a communal space.”
She returned to Toledo intent on studying jazz voice. She found a mentor in the late jazz legend Jon Hendricks who had himself returned to his Toledo roots to teach at UT.
Martin served as his teaching assistant for two years. During that time, she did an oral history of his career. That was easy, Martin said. Hendricks was a raconteur, so all she had to do was hit record and the stories would flow. She also interviewed Aria, his youngest daughter, and she added stories about living in a home full of jazz royalty. Her favorite visitor, she told Martin, was Dizzy Gillespie because he would play Barbies with her.
The material she gathered was so impressive, she decided to pursue a doctorate in jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh so she could continue that work.
Martin said she became absorbed in the academic side. “I kind of went down rabbit,” writing journal articles and attending conferences. “I was missing the artistic side.”
She did attend jam sessions run by percussionist Roger Humphries.
Martin felt she had to keep practicing, “woodshedding,” in the jazz lexicon. Then she realized that “I could keep ‘shedding and be perfect in the practice room or I can just get out there and do this, imperfect parts and all. … That was such a relief. I can just be myself. … That was a big impetus for the project.”
In the song “Step Into Your Essence,” she sings: “I have something to share, and not something to prove.”
She honed her craft at the jazz vocal camp held by the New York Voices on the campus of Bowling Green State University.
It was at the first camp in 2009 where she met Piedra, then a doctoral student at BGSU. They are even standing next to each other in the camp’s group photo. A few years later they got married at the camp with the guitar teacher who was also a Buddhist monk officiating, the New York Voices providing the music, and all the campers singing a song written for the occasion by camp faculty member Greg Jasperse as a recessional.
The couple live in Toledo where Piedra is on the UT faculty. Martin teaches part-time at UT as well as at the Toledo School for the Arts. And she performs as much as possible. “That’s what has been missing,” she said.
Their two daughters are 2 and 4. “The perfect age for jazz,” their mother said.
“These are wonderful teachers, these small human beings,” Martin said. “They live in the moment and are so completely who they are. They don’t care what other people think.”
In the opening track, “Living for the Now,” she writes of them: Dancing queens with smiles to melt your heart. /A laugh, a kiss, a messy work of art / Living for the now.”
It’s a philosophy their mother embraces.
Martin started composing at the Voice camp under the tutelage of Peter Eldridge, a vocalist and pianist with the group.
Coming from a classical voice background she thought “songwriting sounds cool but for smart people.”
But Eldridge inspired her and taught her the craft of songwriting. She still reaches out to him for help with songs, and he is one of the guest artists on “Verdant” playing and singing on a couple tracks. Two of the songs from that period “As Time Goes” and “Moments,” written after her grandfather died, are on the program.
Other guest artists are guitarist and producer Keith Ganz, Ben Wolkins on trumpet, Vitor Gonçalves on accordion, Andrew Bishop on clarinet, and Mike Harrison on vocals.
She selected songs that followed a thread. The title of the album, “Verdant,” reflects “the renewal of life after we’ve been through struggles, living in moment, enjoying the beauty of life,” Martin said. “That was the overarching theme I was going for.”
