Canadian singer Nikki Yanofsky got about as big an introduction to the world as one could ever hope for.
In February, the 16-year-old Montreal-raised jazz-pop prodigy sang Canada’s national anthem at the opening ceremony at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. The estimated worldwide TV audience watching at the time? Only about three billion.
What’s more, her song I Believe was the recurring tune played during CTV’s broadcasts during the Games.
“It was on every two seconds on CTV, and it was also on the radio a lot — so we had really good support,” said Yanofsky, relaxing in the lobby of a Toronto hotel recently, as her mother sat nearby.
Sometimes the right singer meets the right song, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“It sounded like an anthem when I heard it,” Yanofsky said of I Believe, a song co-written by Stephan Moccio and Alan Frew. “I heard the demo without my voice on it. And right when I heard it I got the shivers. And you know, it was something different than most songs. It’s anthemic. It’ll trigger a memory, bringing it back to the Olympics. It does, at least, for me.”
Yanofsky — who launches a cross-Canada jazz-festival tour this week — said she’ll never forget the first moment off stage after the opening ceremony.
“I was flipping out,” she said. “I looked at my phone and I had 64 texts. I was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ And it just kept buzzing. And I’m like, ‘OK — Mom, Dad, you go back to the green room, I want to go to my dressing room for a sec.’ And I called my best friend (in Montreal) and I started hysterically crying with happiness. I was like, ‘I can’t believe this has happened to me!’ And he was like, ‘Dude, why are you crying?’ ”
I Believe is included on Yanofsky’s first studio album, Nikki, which came out at the end of April. It debuted at No. 1 on the SoundScan jazz chart in Canada and Billboard’s New Artist-Heatseekers chart in the U.S.
Co-produced by 15-time Grammy-winner Phil Ramone (Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Burt Bacharach, Paul Simon), Nikki is part American songbook, part originals that were co-written by Yanofsky, co-producer Jesse Harris (Norah Jones) and Toronto singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith. One tune was provided by Feist (Try Try Try).
“Some people think that (the CD) lacks direction,” Yanofsky said with a shrug. “A couple of my friends were like, ‘How come it has so many different genres on it?’ ’Cause that’s what I wanted to do. It’s just, like, deliberately eclectic. It has pop ’cause I love pop. And it has jazz ’cause I love jazz.”
There’s even Led Zeppelin’s Fool In The Rain inserted in the middle of On The Sunny Side Of The Street.
“A little Zeppelin in there for sure,” said Yanofsky, who hopes to follow a similar career path as other jazz-pop artists as Jones and Canadians Michael Buble and Diana Krall. “We wanted the whole album to reflect me as a person, not just as an artist. I’m just really, really happy with the way it came out, ’cause you hear who influenced me on the covers, and then you see how on the originals.”
Yanofsky met Ramone through her involvement in the all-star Ella Fitzgerald 2007 tribute album, We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song, and in 2008 she released her first full-length album, a live CD/DVD concert package entitled Ella... Of Thee I Swing, which earned her two 2009 Juno nominations.
“He has what I call the ‘it’ factor,” Yanofsky said of Ramone. “You just want to be around him. And Jesse, also, was very instrumental in helping me find my voice as a writer, and Ron Sexsmith. Both of them. They helped me so much in developing myself as a writer, as a creator — not just an impersonator of covers. So it’s really cool that I was able to do that and I’ve learned so much from this album.”
Harris and Sexsmith had dinner in Montreal and went over to Yanofsky’s house the next day, where they wrote three songs in her basement.
“We’re like, ‘OK, we just found a connection that’s pretty magical here, because it’s very rare. And it was crazy that we were able to connect that way ... It felt like I had known both of them for my whole entire life, and I had just met them. Ron Sexsmith is like my favourite lyricist. To me, I look at him and say, ‘He’s my Bob Dylan.’ I still get starstruck every time I meet him, I swear.”
Yanofsky met Feist backstage at last year’s Junos but she essentially came on board through her relationship with Harris.
“She called him up and said, ‘I think I have a song that would be cool for Nikki’s voice,” Yanofsky said. “I was like, ‘What? Feist wrote a song for me?’ I love her. Everybody knows who she is. And to have her behind it, it’s just kind of a really big compliment.”
jane.stevenson@sunmedia.ca
