What is accessible jazz? Trombonist and vocalist Hailey Brinnel will tell you.
"It doesn’t have a high bar for entry," said the Temple grad whose new album ‘Beautiful Tomorrow’, is out March 17. She performs at World Café Live April 20.
When Hailey Brinnel sings, “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow,” she fully believes it. The Sherman Brothers tune that became Walt Disney’s unofficial theme song lends its title to Brinnel’s second album, Beautiful Tomorrow, out today on the Outside in Music label. It also provides a beaming optimism that suffuses the singer and trombonist’s approach to music.
“I’ve half-jokingly called the music that we play ‘accessible jazz,’” Brinnel explained last week, over coffee near her home in Glenside. “It doesn’t have a high bar for entry. I try to make music that modern audiences can find danceable and feel an emotional connection to, without necessarily having to know a lot about jazz.”
Brinnel’s music harks back to an earlier era of jazz, a pre-1950 age of swing and show tunes. Yet her take on that vintage sound never feels as if she’s putting on a costume. Her 2021 debut, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, consisted solely of standards from the era, but Beautiful Tomorrow sets these classics alongside more recent material from the likes of Harry Nilsson and Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and, for the first time, her own songs. She celebrates the album’s release tonight at the Newtown Theatre, followed by a show at World Café Live on April 20.
The 27-year-old grew up steeped in those sounds. Her father, Dave Brinnel, is a longtime singer and pianist in Western Massachusetts, and his shows mix songs from Sinatra and the Rat Pack, with Billy Joel and the Beatles.
Hailey became a part of her father’s act at the age of 12, playing drums and singing at local nightclubs.
“He would sit me down in the living room and teach me Monkees songs, and [my mom] was the one making sure I didn’t quit, like kids do.” Her familiarity with jazz came from her father’s collection of vocal acts such as Jackie and Roy, and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and from her trombonist grandfather.
Brinnel cycled through several other options before landing on the trombone; she considered or played drums, upright bass, violin, French and baritone horn.
“When I got to school I realized that I only knew about 5% of jazz, and that’s being generous,” she said. Temple University’s jazz education program brought her to Philly and a more thorough immersion in the music’s history.
Brinnel dove into the local jazz scene, playing various styles and discovering unexpected connections, such as the collective improvisation that links free jazz with traditional New Orleans sounds. She frequented saxophonist Victor North’s jam session at Chris’ Jazz Café until she was old enough to attend sessions at Time and led a regular jam session at drummer Sherrie Maricle’s club Drummers during its brief existence.
That was where Brinnel met the members of her band: pianist Silas Irvine, bassist Joe Plowman, and drummer Dan Monaghan. Beautiful Tomorrow also features appearances by trumpeters Andrew Carson and Terell Stafford (one of her key mentors as the director of jazz studies at Temple) and saxophonist Chris Oatts. She also teaches at UArts and the Kimmel Center.
“I love the Philly jazz scene,” Brinnel enthused. “It’s just big enough that you can play with different people all the time, but small enough that it’s a real community. There’s also a love for straight-ahead jazz and hard bop that is unique to the city. It’s been easier to connect here with people who are down to play straight-ahead swing.”