MELODY GARDOT CELEBRATES 20 YEARS IN MUSIC WITH HER FIRST PERSONAL COLLECTION ‘THE ESSENTIAL MELODY GARDOT’
ANNOUNCED TODAY · CURATED BY GARDOT · RELEASED 25 OCT 2024 ON DECCA RECORDS
A CAREER-SPANNING OVERVIEW OF THE STAR US VOCALIST’S SINGULAR MUSICAL VISION
PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED TRACK ‘FIRST SONG’ IS OUT NOW AND AVAILABLE
“A remarkable artist” The Guardian
“A magnetic performer” The Times
20 SEPTEMBER 2024 (TORONTO, ON) — On 25th October, Decca Records celebrate Melody Gardot’s 20-year anniversary in music with the release of The Essential Melody Gardot, a 25-track collection comprising music selected and sequenced by Gardot herself. Much more than a mere best-of, it is a listening experience intended to convey the length and depth of Gardot’s achievements as a recording and performing artist. “I tried to create a vibe as one would with a set list, especially for the vinyl, so that each side has a mood,” she notes. The Essential Melody Gardot is also intended to present her as she grew and developed her craft of singing and songwriting, capturing the journey she began in 2004 as she lay in a hospital bed, recovering from a debilitating car accident.
Two tunes on The Essential Melody Gardot have not been released until now. ‘La Llorona’ is a haunting Mexican ballad rife with tragedy and endless verses. Gardot chose to perform it to an appreciative crowd in Mallorca in 2019 with gentle guitar-and-cello accompaniment. ‘First Song’ is a masterfully delicate reading of an Abbey Lincoln/Charlie Haden composition that was the product of a magic moment of inspiration in the studio: bassist Haden, Brazilian cellist Jaques Morelenbaum, and keyboardist Gil Goldstein all contributing. “Charlie was the catalyst,” Gardot recalled. “It was a random, heartbeat moment à la [the Duke Ellington/Charles Mingus/Max Roach session] Money Jungle. We were all there, and Charlie handed me the music and said, ‘I want you to sing this.’”
The majority of the music on The Essential Melody Gardot is drawn from Gardot’s six studio recordings, from 2008’s major label debut Worrisome Heart to her 2022 collaboration with Brazilian pianist Philippe Powell, Entre eux deux. A few are special remixes or versions that have not been readily available, such as her half-sung, half-spoken rendition of Elton John’s ‘Love Song’ (originally on 2020’s Sunset in the Blue), with trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf contributing emotive filigree. A number highlight Gardot’s multilingual skills, intoning in French (‘La chanson des vieux amants’, ‘La Vie en Rose’) and Spanish (‘La Llorona’) with the ease and flow of a native speaker. And four concert recordings add live punch to the set, capturing the fun and immediacy of her shows. “I love the vulnerability of a live performance” Gardot states, “It’s raw and honest.”
The Essential Melody Gardot is released on Decca on October 25th and is available to pre-order HERE.
TRACKLIST
Side A:
1. Baby I’m A Fool
2. If The Stars Were Mine
3. C’est Magnifique feat. António Zambujo
4. Morning Sun
5. Sweet Memory
6. Mira
7. Over The Rainbow
Side B:
1. Worrisome Heart
2. Our Love Is Easy
3. Love Song (Feat. Ibrahim Maalouf)
4. La Charon des Vieux Amants
5. Les Étoiles - Live
6. La Vie En Rose
Side C:
1. First Song *UNRELEASED*
2. This Foolish Heart Could Love You - The Paris Sessions
3. Once I Was Loved
4. Ain’t No Sunshine (Live In Paris)
Moon River
Side D:
1. Your Heart Is As Black As Night
2. If I Tell You I Love You
3. Who Will Comfort Me
4. Love Me Liker A River Does (Live In Paris)
5. Bad News (Live)
5. La Llorana (Live) *UNRELEASED*
About Melody Gardot
Melody Gardot was born in 1985 in New Jersey, and was surrounded by music from the start, singing songs with her mother while riding in the car, and later taking piano lessons. By her teenage years, Gardot began to perform around Philadelphia, even as her studies led her more towards art and fashion. Then at the age of 19, while riding her bicycle on a city street, she was hit by a car making an illegal turn. The tragic event changed the course of her life.
The resulting head and pelvic injuries led to two years of an exceedingly slow and painful recovery process. Gardot had to recover memories and reestablish motor and communication skills. Finding herself overly sensitive to light and sound, music therapy proved the most effective recuperative tool, the “lightning bolt” — as she calls it — that brought her back. “I was singing and writing songs as a means to relearn how to speak. The message was that music is an all-powerful force.” Hypersensitive to light and noise, she wore dark glasses, and the music she listened to — and in which she began to discover her own sound — was necessarily soft, slow, and melodic. Even sitting in a chair was a challenge at first. Unable to play piano she began to learn guitar. While still in her hospital bed, she wrote and recorded songs that would become her first recording, the 2005 EP Some Lessons: The Bedroom Sessions.
The local, then regional notoriety Gardot gained quickly led to her being signed by Universal Music in 2006, and she soon recorded her full-length debut album Worrisome Heart, released in 2007 on the Verve label to warm critical response. Her breakthrough came in 2009 with My One and Only Thrill, produced by Larry Klein (celebrated for his work with vocalists, especially Joni Mitchell) with arrangements by Vince Mendoza, the album peaking at number two on Billboard’s U.S. Jazz Albums chart and eventually selling 1.5 million copies worldwide, and securing three Grammy nominations. Its success led to a number of international tours, lifting Gardot to headliner status. Three years later, in 2012, she released The Absence, which debuted at the top of Billboard’s Jazz LP chart and was produced by Brazilian guitarist/composer Heitor Pereira, revealing Gardot expanding her stylistic palette to include more exotic sounds and rhythms. Reuniting with Larry Klein, Gardot released Currency of Man in 2015, her voice developing a stronger, more robust edge and a musical direction that furthered her exploration of using recording techniques to creatively craft songs for modern ears, strongly influenced by R&B, blues, and traces of modern pop. Live in Europe, Gardot’s first full-length live album, was released in 2018, celebrating not only her live performances, but one of her favorite touring bands.
In 2020, Gardot and Klein reunited yet again to produce the voice-and-orchestra Sunset in the Blue. The 13-track album featured a mix of original tunes and well-chosen covers performed with the support of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and featured an all-star cast of studio contributors including Sting, jazz trumpeter Till Brönner, Portuguese singer Antonio Zambujo, arranger Vince Mendoza, and engineer Al Schmitt. Shifting her approach yet again, Entre eux deux was released in 2022, a fine-tuned collaboration between Gardot and Brazilian pianist Philippe Powell (son of a legendary guitarist Baden Powell.) Focusing only on voice and piano, the album features ten tracks, most composed by Gardot.
Gardot’s ongoing focus on her health and her love of foreign musical traditions contributed to her decision in 2012 to relocate to Lisbon, and then in 2017, to Paris. In France, she has been welcomed and risen to a star of great magnitude, winning the country’s highest cultural award, a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an honor shared by the likes of William Burroughs and Philip Glass.
Looking back on two decades of personal progress, musical ascendancy, and stunning consistency all points to the idea of an artist of lasting power who has many chapters left to write in her story. To think that Gardot’s journey began in a hospital bed is amazing in itself; that she was able, within a few short years, to discover her musical identity all while growing up in public, is testament to an enduring talent with much more left to share.