The Jamie Lee Trio: Introspective at 5

Jamie Lee's first and only album to date as a drummer-bandleader, Introspective, came out at the end of February 2020. Its release pointed toward a new decade of Vancouver jazz, but it also saw the doors close on the pre-covid scene, its release show taking place on the leap day before everything changed.

The Jamie Lee Trio includes pianist James Dekker and bassist Marcus Abramzik; Lee wrote all ten compositions on Introspective. To mark five years since the release, I interviewed Lee and others involved. The story presented itself to me in five parts: the background, the sound of the trio, Lee's rise through the scene, her musical pivot, and ultimately a reinvention of her career. We begin with the background – the road to recording.

Jamie Yoongi Lee, born and raised in South Korea, arrived in the lower mainland as a teenager. "My family came to Canada in 2008, and I went to high school in Surrey," she said. "And then I got to Cap in 2013."

Lee met Abramzik at Capilano University in the fall of 2015. "Marcus had come back to the program to finish his bachelor's degree, and he and I played in ‘C’ band together," she said, referring to the jazz program's third-ranked big band.

Abramzik is an active multi-genre bassist today, just as he was then. He recalled playing with Lee in the band. "It really brought us together," he said. "We vented about our malcontents of being in an organized educational system for learning an oral-aural tradition, which felt like a contradiction. But we also learned to lean on each other to make the music come to life and found a connection in listening and reacting to each other in that band, which really helped us to make music that was fun for both of us."

Lee later ended up alongside Dekker, who had burst onto the CapU scene as a first-year pianist. "James started a year later than me, but then I ended up taking most courses with that cohort later on. I just saw James play all the time in combo classes and I was like, yup, that's the guy." (I got in touch with Dekker while writing this story, but I didn't conduct an interview with him before publication.)

Around 2018 and 2019, Lee graduated from CapU with a Bachelor of Music. Her earliest gigs with Abramzik happened at places like the Tangent Cafe and Aperture Coffee Bar.

Off-campus, Lee joined a rock band called Porteau. Led by Victoria Williams and Craig Stevenson, the band also featured bassist Chad Galpin and guitarist Madeleine Elkins. Their time in the band culminated in the album What I Need.

"Porteau is the [group] that fulfilled my indie-band dream," Lee said. "We had a lot of great shows together. We went to BreakOut West in Whitehorse. That was super fun. I met a ton of really cool musicians; that was my first conference-esque experience as a musician, and we had so much fun." Lee would start attending conferences as something other than a musician in a few years' time.

Lee and Elkins also played together in the Sister Jazz Orchestra big band and in Kria Wall's Spindle!, a seven-piece band.

"Spindle! was just the perfect mixture of music that people maybe can sing along, can connect to a little bit more on a personal level than instrumental music I think," Lee said. "There's a vocalist, there's lyrics, there's melodies. But then also compositionally, it was very interesting to play as well. There was a lot of odd time signature stuff, very fluid musical structures, and it was a bigger band than the Jamie Lee Trio. It was really interesting to play in that configuration."

That balance between accessibility and odd time signatures eventually found its way to Introspective. Spindle! has released two singles to-date, the earlier of which is self-titled and opens with Lee's drums.

Lee also worked with another CapU-trained artist of Korean descent: vocalist Sara Kim. Lee played in Kim's ensemble called Watermill and shared a bill with her WCMA-nominated band Omianan.

The Jamie Lee Trio developed its material while the leader undertook this variety of experiences. Lee said that with Dekker and Abramzik, she "rehearsed quite a bit, almost every week at James' place, probably for at least six months."

The gigging lifestyle that Lee was exploring hadn't yet translated to the trio, other than a couple small nights at Presentation House or the Tangent Cafe. "Eventually, Marcus was like, Jamie, actually, we need to record. I think we can't just rehearse all the time!"

Lee received a $2,000 kickstart toward the project via the FACTOR Artist Development grant. She booked at 181 East 1st Street, North Vancouver: formerly known as Bakerstreet Studios when the late Paul Baker ran it, at the time known as Crew Studios, and today home to Andy Schichter and Dan Ponich's Park Sound Studio. Engineer Charlotte Duggan recorded the trio over three days in August 2019.

Lee's memory of recording was mixed and reflected the experience of being a new graduate. "I think I was operating in a very autopilot mode, and I was making the album... honestly, looking back, I wasn't really making the album for myself, where it should have been. It was more like a career milestone that I should take as a musician: if I want to be taken seriously, I need to have an album, you know?"

Regardless, Lee "knew what she wanted to hear," Abramzik said. "I think she has a really individual artistic voice, but she also knows how to express that voice clearly."

Abramzik said the trio became a liberating force in his career. "I came from a more rock, pop, and folk background where it’s less interactive. Sometimes taking risks in those settings can get you fired, so it was a big confidence-builder for me to have Jamie and James get excited by me taking risks and throwing new ideas at them."

Before continuing the story in 2020 and onward, I'll direct my attention to the music itself.