Artist Information
Christina's parents on bandstand, circa 1960
Christina de Souza was born in Hong Kong, raised in Montreal, and now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her parents were both hard working jazz musicians, performing as many as eight shows a week at Hong Kong's famous Cellar Bar at the Ambassador Hotel in the late 50s and 60s, where Hollywood movie stars hobnobbed with sailors on R&R. Christina heard the sounds of Miles, Billie, and Ella early on and watched her parents perform as soon as she could sit up in a high chair.
While Christina's own heritage is Macanese (Portuguese from Macau) and Filipina, she attended British schools and was exposed to High Anglican church music in addition to the cacophony of Chinese street celebrations and the Peking Opera favored by a close family friend.
After moving to the Bay Area as a young adult, Christina studied with diverse teachers, citing the risk-taking of Rhiannon and Art Lande as major influences informing her own work. For a short time, Christina studied Northern Indian Classical music with Sufi Pir, Shabda Kahn, and with Sri Karunamayee of New Delhi's Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Christina greatly admires the work of Mark Murphy, Abbey Lincoln, Shirley Horn, Sheila Jordan, Nancy King, Kurt Elling, fado singer Mariza, and Qawwali singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
In Her Own Words: About the “Beautiful Love 2.0” Recording
I was working at a large, urban hospital and had met a lot of beautiful people—caregivers mostly—and I'd observed that, when it came to nurturing, they'd often put themselves at the bottom of the list. So, originally, when I first talked to Art [Lande] about the project, I spoke about my vision of creating a recording of lullabies for adults, songs to soothe the soul, dedicated to these caregivers. You can hear vestiges of that original intent in “Lazy Afternoon” and Sting's beautiful “Lullaby for an Anxious Child.” Once I started working with Art, however, exchanging material and ideas for arrangements, the project evolved and became a more unique expression of me as a storyteller. Art is a brilliant improvisor who always surprises and, for me, he was an instigator in the best possible way, encouraging me to go further “out there.”
Bartolome (Omeng) Conçepcion and daughter
The topic became love, but not innocent love in its first bloom before you've been disappointed, disillusioned, or betrayed. It's about the love after love has knocked you around a bit and you're in Round #2.
Art and I didn't rehearse much, just one hour at the Jazzschool in Berkeley many months before the recording and then for a couple of hours at the place where Art was staying on the afternoon before the recording session.
Most of the arrangements were created collaboratively. For “Blanche Comme La Neige,” I said to Art, “I see an icy, frozen landscape with just a church and steeple against the horizon.” Then, just like that, he created the perfect intro for the song. The arrangement for “All the Things You Are,” was Art's idea. It's such a sweet song, but Art wanted the concept of “all the things” to include the not so great things about your partner ... because you love those things about them too. I wrote the rants for that song in the studio a couple of minutes before we recorded it.
Christina's self-portrait with distorted binary code for “love”
The rant on “Beautiful Love” was inspired by how the Internet has changed the way a lot of people relate, using various social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and how some people are now searching for mates. (This is part of a phenomenon referred to as Web 2.0.) A friend of mine had told me there were at least a dozen Internet dating sites he'd tried. Purely for “research” purposes, I joined Match.com for two weeks to see what that was about.
Art and I went to Cookie Marenco's beautiful OTR Studios in Belmont to record. Having Cookie as our producing engineer was like having a third musician in the studio. Actually, she does play the shruti box on “Lazy Afternoon,” but her musicianship, her mastery of the many tools in her studio, and especially her ear, were most apparent in the mixing stage. Cookie asked me to bring in several tracks of mixes that I liked to our first mixing session. Before just four notes of the piano from the first track I brought in sounded, she went, “Hmmm, Steinway Grand.” Amazing woman!
Most of the songs were done in one or two takes, direct to 2” tape, and over the course of two half-days. Art and I were in the same room about eight feet from each other, no headphones, with Art at Cookie's gorgeous Bösendorfer piano. That meant no punch-ins; WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).
The arrangement for “Mood Indigo” happened right before we recorded it. I asked Art to play with just one finger. That's what's so great when it's just the two of you—there's so much freedom. To play with someone as creative, supportive, and present in the moment as Art is pure pleasure and I appreciate him for making this recording possible.
I hope you'll share Art's reaction when he listened to our raw mixes: “I listened to the whole thing. I laughed. I cried. I loved it!”
—Christina de Souza