Maureen Washington is coming home for Christmas.
Since the Prince George jazz-soul-blues singer performed last in her Prince George hometown, she worked with Valdy on his Read Between The Lines album.
She was nominated as Female Vocalist of the Year in the Vancouver Island Music Awards (she now calls Victoria home base) one year, then nominated for Best Live Act the next.
She picked up Monday Magazine's Jazz and Blues Artist of the Year award for the past three years in a row.
She went deep, third round, in CBC's Searchlight Contest in 2013.
Then last year came the power play that put her on the national radar. Washington won the 2014 Black Canadian Award for Best Jazz and Soul Artist in the nation.
She also got married to her longtime sweetheart Darryl Schultz (also a P.G. expatriate).
It has been a busy few years that has set her on a course to expand her tour routes and pursue bigger festivals and venues. But she didn't feel right drawing new lines on the map without first walking down her most familiar road. She will be in Prince George on Nov. 27 for her first concert appearance here since 2012. It will be a night of Christmas music, by popular demand after her 2005 seasonal album did so well. She has a new holiday disc, Christmas Is, fresh off the presses just in time to debut at the P.G. Playhouse.
"This show is what inspired the album," she said. "I haven't been up to P.G. for a few years, so I was on the phone with my planning committee - my mother - and the way my schedule was looking, it just fit that I come at a time when a Christmas show was appropriate. And people keep asking about when my next Christmas album was coming, so it all fit together. I set the date, so I had to record the album, I got that done this fall, and it was all because of committing to do a show in P.G."
Her first Christmas package was a set of her personal holiday favourites - classics of the genre that she's loved over the years and knew others would also be intrinsically familiar with.
That done, she could be more strategically adventurous with her second Christmas offering. She could also make choices informed by feedback from the first CD.
For example, she got a flurry of downloads of her version of Walking In A Winter Wonderland. Rather than assume it was a frenzied response to her vocal skills, she looked deeper into the metrics available in the digital consumer age and came to a hypothesis.
"I think what happened was, because it is such a favourite but hasn't been recorded by all that many artists over the years, there was extra interest in my version," she said.
Applying that logic, she went delving into her long list of personal beloved tunes to see if that condition might apply to any others. She loved the title track after hearing a version by Lou Rawls of the song originally composed by Percy Faith. By doing her version of Christmas Is, she updated a seasonal song that always brought her warmth.
She also went with her heart on other recognizable songs that have fewer versions to propel them into the 21st century: the Irving Berlin classic I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm. In the heyday of pop-jazz, this song was covered by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and many others. In the past 20 years, though, only a handful of artists have given it a turn and some of those (Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart) are themselves of the older pop generation.
The same could be applied to Christmas Time Is Here which was written especially for the seminal cartoon movie A Charlie Brown Christmas. It has been covered by a smattering of artists since then - from guitar rocker Steve Vai, to folkie fave Shawn Colvin, to another Vancouver Island jazzer named Diana Krall - but few of those versions fit the same smooth soul sounds that Washington provides, so again she is breaking new ground for a well-known song.
Christmas Waltz was another she pulled from the pages of the lesser-worked but deeply-loved songbook, written specifically for Frank Sinatra by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne. They composed it after it struck them there were few if any popular seasonal songs set to waltz timing. It was a fact seized on by Mel Torme, Pat Boone, Canadian crooner Robert Goulet and Canuck piano great Oscar Peterson, Andy Williams, the Carpenters, and many others, but it faded from the modern recording studio. The notable exception being the hit version by Harry Connick Jr. in 2003.
Meanwhile, Christmas Must Be Tonight has been done by a few big acts over the years, such as Hall And Oates and My Morning Jacket, taken from a lesser-known 1977 album by The Band. It was written by their Canadian frontman Robbie Robertson with his earthy southern rock signature sound. Washington updates it and adds some soul colour.
Washington also does a new treatment of the nostalgic Joni Mitchell song River, which might be one of the most Canadian songs ever conceived of for the Christmas season (once you look beyond The Huron Carol written circa 1642 by Jean de Brbeuf and loaded in aboriginal content). River has been reproduced by an enormous number of artists, from James Taylor to actor Robert Downie Jr., to Tori Amos to Bela Fleck and enjoyed an upsurge in popularity since Sarah McLachlan did her version of it eight years ago.
Washington said it was one of those songs loaded in interpretive possibility.
"Daniel Lapp [another former Prince George resident now living in Victoria] came into the studio for me and played some trumpet, flugelhorn and violin and as I listened to him play, I was so moved with complete sadness, his playing was so heart-wrenching, that I discovered there was still this heart-touching that goes on through this music and it gave me tears," she said.
"In the studio, when the musician finishes their part, they almost always turn to me with that 'was that OK?' expression, and when Daniel looked over, I had tears in my eyes and I had to look away."
She chose another new Christmas standard for its personal emotional impact. The Sara Bareilles tune Love Is Christmas hits her right in the heart and she felt compelled to the core to sing it. She mixed in touches of J.S. Bach's classical Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
"For the last couple of years it's been like my Christmas theme," said Washington. "And it's hard for me to even describe it without getting emotional. It's about the fact that my family lives with cancer looming so large - it's something Darryl has battled hard - and thinking all the time that maybe this is our last Christmas together, and that bringing to mind for us that love is Christmas, its not everything else. So when we take stock each year, and Darryl makes it through again, it renews that feeling of gratitude for life, and love for family and friends and all humanity, and looking forward. Who cares if the house is clean, if the decorations are all up, if you got all the right shopping done, if everything is in perfect order? It doesn't matter."
She rounded the album out with some more traditional classics and a couple of her own compositions as well, including a co-written song with her former Prince George bandmate Daniel Cook in the group BOP, prior to both of them moving to Vancouver Island.
Washington said there was some New Year's Eve content on the album, too, and the whole package was a mid-tempo easy listen. It never gets overtly serious or rambunctious "so it's perfect for putting on as background music at the Christmas party or putting up the decorations or just watching the snow fall."
Washington will be accompanied at her homecoming Christmas concert by present sidemen Karel Roessingh, Joey Smith and Damian Graham.
Tickets are $25 in advance or $30 at the door, available now at Studio 2880.
