Canadian Originals is a series by Will Chernoff featuring exclusive long-form interviews with Cellar Music artists from Canada. In this edition of this series, Will talks to pianist and composer Anna Lumière about her band Mimosa and their latest album Bien ensemble (release date: March 29, 2024). Anna came to Canada in the mid-80s and emerged as a Vancouver musician in the late 90s, founding the band all the way back then and leading it through four albums plus several personnel changes. Mimosa is a bilingual vocal jazz-pop ensemble with samba, groove, and swing elements.
Will is a bassist and a writer at the Vancouver jazz website Rhythm Changes. He spoke to Anna by videocall on October 4, 2024.
WILL CHERNOFF: Anna, thank you so much for joining me. I sense that I find you in a home studio or workstation of some sort, so what materials do you have around you? Instruments, music, notation, software: what happens in this creative space of yours that it looks like you're in?
ANNA LUMIÈRE: Actually, I should take you to my actual creative space. You can see it a little better, and we can still chat while we go. This is an office in here. But my actual creative space [...] Oh, we have a little rehearsal room here. That's the band rehearsal room. And then, it is in a separate building–
WC: Wow.
AL: This is my creative space.
WC: Nice, thanks for showing me that. So you're based on the Sunshine Coast?
AL: Yeah, Roberts Creek.
WC: Have you been there a long time?
AL: Roberts Creek, three years, but we were in Gibsons from 2006 or 7, I think. So, 18 years or something.
WC: Where were you before that?
AL: We were in Strathcona in Vancouver.
WC: Nice. And what about if you go even further back from that? Did you come from Vancouver in terms of where you were raised or somewhere else?
AL: I was raised in Switzerland.
WC: Oh! When did you come to Canada?
AL: I was 17. Yeah, I came to learn English, actually.
WC: What was your first language or languages? Switzerland has many.
AL: Yeah my family was Swiss German, but I grew up mostly in the French part. So I guess French was my first language, although I spoke Swiss German with my parents, too. I speak Spanish, as well.
WC: Wow, so you speak at least four languages?
AL: Yeah, it's pretty common in Europe, you know, it's not such a big deal. But here, you're like a star or something [laughs].
WC: Definitely less common. So at 17, did you come here for university?
AL: No. I wanted to go to music school. I wanted to go to Vienna, but my parents thought I should do something more practical and learn English. Also, when I was born, my parents happened to live in Toronto for a year and a half. I was actually born in Toronto, so I could have Canadian citizenship – the only one in my family [who could do that]. So they were like, why don't you maybe consider going to Canada? And I thought, okay, I could work there for a year and learn English, so that's what I did.
WC: So you didn't really think you were going to stick around?
AL: No, not at all. No, that was a surprise. I wanted to go to music school, but when I came here, instead I worked on Grouse Mountain as a horse trail guide. That was my first job. From there, I went to North Van and met these guys and they were all musicians, pretty much a month after I got here. Then I started dating one of them and we ended up living together for eight years. He was a sax player and a painter. He did all these paintings of jazz, mostly like jazz musicians. He actually had [an art] show at the Classical Joint for a couple of years. And then later at Leon's when he got more into abstract sort of urban jazz scenes. So yeah, we hung out at jazz clubs and sold art. And then we also played together in a band called The Comfort Zone. That was the first band when I was 17. I was underage to play in the bars, so I had to sneak in sometimes.
Yeah, and then I did try to go back to Switzerland to go to school there, but my parents were not getting along and they were just about to get a divorce. And I worked as a cashier while I waited to go to school, and it really was a horrible job, and I missed music and my boyfriend and my parents. I was alone with my parents. So I thought, maybe I'll just go to Canada and do a little bit of studying there. And then the little bit turned into a little longer, and then afterwards it just became too late to go back [laughs].
WC: That's awesome. Yeah, I know you as a piano player. So you were playing piano in your first Vancouver years, is that what you were playing?
AL: Yeah.
WC: Is this like the early 90s, or what time period is this?
AL: In ‘85 I came to Vancouver. 1985.
WC: Oh, wow. That was a certain era in the community too, like the people who founded the jazz festival were just starting to do that. That's an interesting time.
AL: I think it was already going, but I used to go to the landmark jazz bar and watch like Dave Pickell [...] VEJI sometimes played. Who was in the other bands, Skywalk? Yeah, Skywalk, and Jim McGillivray and Dave Pickell, and yeah, it was super fun. There was a good scene at the Landmark Jazz Bar, and then there was the Classical Joint, which was great. Later, Leon's became like a sort of R&B place. Doug Louie was always accompanying black singers, Sibel Thrasher, Amanda Hughes. We hung out there a lot too, because we sold quite a bit of art from there. And I took some lessons with Doug. Actually just one, but [laughs]. Yeah.
WC: With Doug Louie.
AL: Yeah, I took one lesson with Doug. Yeah.
WC: Nice. Okay, now I see the timeline a little bit in my mind, but it's interesting how much space there still is before Mimosa started. And Mimosa has a long history, because with the release of Bien ensemble, you're talking about how Mimosa has a 25-year anniversary year this year. So that would put the start of the band in like ‘99, 2000, or late nineties or something. So there's still time.
AL: It was actually ‘98. I chose 25 years because it seemed like a rounder number [laughs]. But yeah, it was ‘98. So yeah, I did end up doing a degree in something else because my parents did not want to support music. I thought they'll support an academic degree, so that's what I did. But I played all through that time too. I finished, and then I worked for a year or two and saved up money to go back to school. And then I paid my own way to go: I went to Cap [Capilano University’s jazz program], but just for three years. I didn't finish, because I pushed all my non-playing courses to the end. And since I was paying for it myself and not living at home, it was rather stressful. I both had to work – I worked as an interpreter – and played gigs and then also had a pretty full course load. I ended up not exercising much, I had a really sore back – I was pretty out of shape, because I just didn't have much time. I found it quite stressful.
In my third year, I started playing with lots of people, and I felt like I was out there. I joined this funk band, and they were touring quite a bit, so I started touring, and then I just missed the deadline to register for the fourth year. I thought, oh, I guess I'm not going back. I had conducting and history and things like that left, and I thought, I'm not going to be a teacher. So I didn't do those. But there's a couple courses I regret not taking. It's not too late. I might still take those [laughs].
WC: That's awesome. We have that in common. You beat me, though. I only made it one year at Cap [laughs].
AL: Right on [laughs].
WC: What was the funk band?
AL: It was called Green Room, and it was we played mostly original funk. Some James Brown too, Maceo Parker, but mostly original stuff. Yeah, we went all across Canada [...] John Raham was our drummer. Geoff Hicks for a bit, and then John Raham for quite a bit. First it was Martin Fisk [...] Jamie Hovorka, who's now totally made it. He just toured with the Eagles. He ended up going to North Texas and then moving to LA. Jamie and John became members of Mimosa as well.
So Green Room was like, I was 27 when I joined that band. And then we played until I was 31. Yeah. 31, because I still toured with my first son until he was 1. I still brought him along, which was not that fun because he liked to get up at 5:00 AM, and I went to bed at two. That was a bit hard.
Then Mimosa started around, yeah, ‘98 with Lily Frost, who was a singer and had previously done a lot of stuff with the Colorifics. They were quite established in the sort of swing lounge scene. They played a lot [...] We met at a dinner party, and we hit it off, and then we got a house gig at the Jupiter. It was just her and I and this drummer, Steve Taylor. He's a rockabilly drummer [...] So that's how we started the first few years. I always played left-hand bass, and when we got paid more, we were like, maybe we get a horn player now, because I've I'm really comfortable playing left-hand bass. So that's where Jamie [Hovorka], who was also in Green Room, joined the band. We also replaced Steve with John Raham, and it was the four of us for a while.
We did some fun things. We went to the Montreal jazzfest, but I think that was actually already with Rebecca [Shoichet, a current Mimosa member]. Rebecca started subbing for Lily. Lily got a Nettwerk deal for her solo career, and then she ended up moving to Toronto.
Rebecca came in, and Jamie went back to school in North Texas. Karen [Graves, saxophonist] was subbing for Jamie [...] John Raham was touring with Frazey Ford and Kinnie Starr, and so then he was replaced by Bernie [Arai, drummer].
WC: Wow, so yeah, even though there's new faces to the band at this point, talking about this album on Cellar, there's still a lot of continuity through the whole life of the band.
AL: Oh yeah, the last three CDs were basically the same personnel. The only chair that has been unstable is the bass chair. We had Adam Thomas for a long time, which is awesome, and it's been a few other different players. But then recently in the last few years, it's been Conrad [Good], which has been great.
WC: Yeah. I want to just jump back briefly to the Cap time. Who else did you encounter there who you maybe still know that we didn't bring up yet, that you met and started playing with around that time from the Cap period. Who else did you meet?
AL: I had a little trio with Darko Čuk. He lives in Kelowna now, he's a bass player. At the same time as I was there, it was Darren Radke, Sharon Minemoto, but they were a year or two ahead, I think [...] Scott [Tucker], a bass player who passed away, he was there. Cory was there – Cory Weeds – and Cory was in [the band] Crash. He was also in People Playing Music, but he was in Crash. We did a few sort of similar funk circuits at that time. Steve Clements, we lived together. Dave Sikula, he lived with us too for a while in North Van. We had a house with Darko, [who was at the time] my boyfriend, and Dave Sikula and Steve Clements, who's now at North Van. He teaches at New West, he's a music teacher.
WC: Steve is like my second dad. I went to New West.
AL: You did?!
WC: Yeah!
AL: Oh, he's so awesome. He's such a fantastic person. The first year I was at Cap, I had a septet, which had Steve in it. We had two horn players, but by the third year it was a trio. As I got more jobs and felt more comfortable, I eliminated the top-end [instruments, like horns] and that's how it went. Steve is such a great guy, he's so musical and he's so fun. He was super fun to live with. New Year's Eve, we'd go out on the street and play. I played a little bit of trumpet, and we’d just make noise, and it was always super fun. Yeah, great times [...] We also had an impromptu soccer team that was all musicians, co-ed/ Steve came and [his partner, now wife, Louise Cournoyer] and Darko and Howard Abel, who was a really good guitar player. So we were all musicians and we played every Sunday and then often had a jam after or would have sushi or something. It was super fun.
WC: That's hilarious because for my one year when I went to Cap and I was still living with my mum in New West, Steve and I – and a couple of high-school students who were still at the high school and were a little bit younger than me – we started playing soccer–
AL: No way!
WC: –on weekend nights in New West at the turf field that they had put in Queen’s Park, and we turned out a bunch of mostly high-school students, but I brought some of my Cap friends there too. We did that for a good summer, most of the year, and then we would go to the Denny's on North Road in Coquitlam afterwards. That's a funny coincidence there for sure.
AL: It's sports for musicians, it's not cleats and competitiveness, it's more like fun and hanging out. We did end up having some heavy-duty soccer players who discovered us, and they'd come and play, but they always had cleats on, and they were super keen. So we used to tell them a different time [laughs], because the women also wouldn't get in any playing when they were there. Whereas when it was just us, then everybody was considerate, you're a little slower or whatever, we all got to play. So it was really fun.
WC: Yeah. Okay, I want to hear about Mimosa's first album. Different chapter of life, long enough time ago. I want to hear whatever you can share about what was going on then and what that experience was like, and maybe work my way forwards to the current one.
AL: Okay, the first one, it was called Bucolique [...] We recorded that with Kory Burk at Ogre Studios, which was up on Main. I quite liked it, although I got talked into doing tracking [multi-track recording and overdubbing, as opposed to everyone recording live off the floor]. I had done some recording before, but not tons. I definitely hadn't recorded that type of music, and we were a little more poppy than the sort of more 60s French pop. That was Lily's influence, and actually she wanted me to play in her band, but it was mostly synth parts playing – not much improv – so I wasn't really into that. Mimosa was a bit of a compromise.
Anyways, Kory talked us into tracking. Engineers always like that, because then they have more control. So we did that, which was painful; you have to lay down all the ghost tracks and then redo all the tracks. It's just not the same, but that's what we did. It was fun. We brought in lots of guests to put in different colours. Lily had quite a lot of artistic vision, I think. We wrote the songs half-and-half.
I'm fairly happy with it overall, I'd say. It was a record of what we were playing, like the tunes had been [what] we played a lot, so that was probably, we played a lot at that time, like three, four nights a week [...]
WC: Released in 2000: where were you playing at the time?
AL: We did quite a bit of corporate stuff, we paid for our albums. We did also sell CDs, in those days you could sell more. It cost quite a bit, the album, because we had a lot of guests, and we did quite a bit of overdubbing. It was just slow with all the tracking. In one year, we paid it all off with corporate gigs. We did festivals, we had different little house gigs sometimes on Commercial, sometimes on Main, we were at the Jupiter for three years [...] The film festival we did regularly. We also did some burlesque shows. Yeah, a mix.
WC: Yeah. And then is the second album Voyage?
AL: Yeah. And then that one again, I got talked into tracking. That was the last one that I did that way. But I think on Voyage, we brought in a bass player for some of it. Bucolique, I did all the left hand bass, except for one funk tune where we brought in a bass player. Voyage, I don't think I played as much left-hand bass. I'm pretty happy with some tunes on that album. I didn't like the mastering. I feel like when you put the album in, it's not as loud as any of the other ones. It's interesting. It doesn't have much presence [...] it was pretty compressed.
One of our tunes, “Politique”, was supposed to be a real messy circus kind of tune, and it just became so tame after it got mastered. That's something I would do differently now for that album. But pretty fun, and if I remember correctly, we recorded at Ogre but it was John Raham engineering it. Yeah, I think so. John was involved in some capacity at all times. The third one, was John had taken over Ogre, but then it was Ian Beaty, who also used to be the bass player in Green Room. So it's all kind of one big family.
WC: And the third album is Méli-Mélo?
AL: Yeah, I'm quite happy with that one. The production I really like. I think all the tunes are good, and that one was live with some overdubs, but mostly all live.
And then this last one [Bien ensemble] was very live, like we basically just recorded it in two days. We did overdub some harmony vocals, because Karen and I sing harmony and we can't play and sing at the same time. I overdubbed a little bit of organ, and that's about it. It's pretty much all live. It was a lot faster, but it still took a while to overdub some of the things. We also brought in a trumpet player, Heather Anderson [...]
WC: I was still stuck on Méli-Mélo, because I was gonna ask you about the cover art. Is it's an interesting room that it depicts with a bunch of stuff everywhere. What is that place?
AL: That place in Gastown, the junk shop. What's it called? Curios? Where the SeaBus is, if you just walk a little ways, I think it's Cordova, it's right on there, you know? It's that little curios shop. It has an upstairs and a downstairs, it's amazing.
My husband, Graham Ord, he took the pictures. He did a lot of our photography. It reflects like our band image, a bit of chaos, a Tom Waits-y chaos circus feel, a mix of things, colouring outside the lines.
WC: Yeah. Is there anything else in this intervening time period, which is like the more recent years or the last decades, that you want to highlight that you did together on the way to this current album now?
AL: Yeah, because there's a big gap between 2009 and now. Basically, we all had kids [laughs]. That made a big difference in terms of our activity level. We did always play, and we played some good shows through those years, but yeah, we we had a bunch of tunes that we wanted to record [...] Played for some TV shows, and we travelled a bit. We did some Okanagan tours and I don't know, things like that.
WC: Yeah. So then once this album starts coming together, you partner up with Cory to put it out. You play at Frankie's a few times on the way to putting it out. You play the jazzfest a few times, I think, with this lineup and around this album and this music. So really, the activity comes alive again.
AL: Yeah, we’re now on the end of when the kids are taking a lot of energy, so it makes it a little easier. Having the support from Cory is huge, because nowadays you can't really sell CDs or not many, so it's hard to make your money back. We're not really doing corporate gigs, because I'm just not interested in that right now, so it's just really hard to make the money back. It's a big outlay of cash. To have the support of Cellar Live on our music is really great, and that's partly what pushed us.
We really needed another album. Like it was so time, you know? It allowed us to reach a bit further. We just came back from the Yardbird [Suite, a jazz club in Edmonton]. We were supposed to do a tour there, but we didn't get the travel grant, so we had to cancel some shows in Calgary and Saskatoon. But yeah, I'm hoping that we'll do a cross-Canada tour eventually. I mean, I'd love to go to France and, or Japan, but we'll see. I've made a couple little attempts at that, but that would be great.
It feels really good. The band right now is sounding amazing, and having Conrad is really fantastic. He's a busy guy, and he's got two little kids. So–
WC: I was going to say, he's not in the same timeline as you on that [laughs].
AL: I know [laughs], but he's such a great player. Him and Bernie together are just such a dynamic rhythm section. It's so fun to solo over, it just is so supportive and dynamic. It's amazing.
WC: Can I mention a couple of tracks and just hear anything you want to say about them? This is one of the tracks that I think stands out across the rest of the album. There are a few kind of pockets of sound that you could describe in different ways, but one of them that jumps out to me where there isn't really another one like it is “Education”.
AL: Okay, yes! That one I actually wrote three or four years ago. It was like a like a rap almost, but I was just riffing: education's gotta be free. I recorded myself, I just came up with it in my little studio, and just riffing on that with a kind of funky feel. I didn't really have chords or anything, it was just that. I had a few little vocalese things. I ended up playing it with this other band that I was in, Tongue and Groove, and singing it. But it was pretty bare bones still. It was mostly for live outdoor shows, because it was a groovy tune. People would dance and stuff.
I looked at it with Rebecca, and we worked on it together. Rebecca came up a few times to Roberts Creek, and we just got together in this studio and workshopped stuff. I wrote a few more lyrics, and then she wrote a bunch more lyrics, like all the verses. We tweaked them together. Even on the way over here, I think on the ferry, she wrote some lyrics. She sang them, and I just played underneath her, and pretty much the first time we played it I kept that chord progression. That's what ended up becoming the tune. We fine-tuned a bit, and I wrote some horn lines, Karen wrote some horn lines, and then it just became that ridiculous extravaganza. It just builds and builds and builds, and every time it ends, I have to laugh. It's just funny.
WC: Yeah, from your keys intro to that.
AL: I know, I love it.
WC: There's a track that Bernie is credited as the composer of.
AL: Yeah. “Málà”.
Yeah, At one time I said I'd like to get some new material. If any of you want to write something or arrange something, that'd be great. Bernie was like, yeah, I'll arrange something. And it was really nice, and I was like, oh, this is cool. When we made the album, it was like, please anybody who wants to write a tune for this album or more, go ahead! So he came up with a tune, which is great. I was excited what lyrics he [might] come up with, but there aren't any [laughs].
WC: I was going to say it stands out because it's wordless, right? Yeah.
AL: But I actually really like it. Sometimes it's a bit challenging to solo on, so Karen and I, we always have the bass player solo. And then we pass off the soloist: oh, it's your turn. And we have to gradually increase the speed because when we asked Bernie what tempo it should be, he said, as fast as possible [laughs].
WC: Easy for him to say!
AL: I know!
WC: And then another track I just really liked was “Gare du Nord”. I really liked that one.
AL: Yeah, that was actually a tune that just wrote itself. I was just going to rehearse with my husband. We have another band called Anagram – Anna and Graham – and he was putting his horns together and it was taking a long time, because they always have to suck on the reeds and stuff, so I just started noodling and that's what came out. Not the whole song, but almost! Yeah.
WC: I really enjoy the way that you incorporated bits of accordion across the album too.
AL: Yeah.
WC: Including on that one.
AL: Yeah, on Méli-Mélo there’s almost even more accordion, I think. I did go through a period of time where I played a lot of accordion, and then just recently I haven't, because I broke my wrist. I'm getting back to it now. But yeah, I love the accordion sound. Rebecca has learned to play the accordion part for “Gare du Nord”, so she can play it too, because I'm playing piano and singing. That works well. I've been taking some vocal lessons with Rebecca, so it was a bonus. I was learning more about singing, and she's learning about accordion. That’s really fun.
WC: Yeah. Thanks for talking me through what ended up being like a long period of history with lots of interesting people and great music you made.
AL: That's what you get when you're older! Yeah.
WC: That was a lot of fun. Thank you very much, Anna.
AL: Thanks so much for asking all those questions. So nice to have a chance to chat about it, and thanks for listening.