American-Swedish couple Champian Fulton and Klas Lindquist stoke their musical rapport at Jazz at the Bolt

Partners in music and life, the pianist-singer and sax master share a love of jazz’s rich history, plus a fresh warmth and energy on their first album together, At Home

By Alexander Varty

Champian Fulton and Klas Lindquist

The Cellar Music Group presents Champian Fulton and Klas Lindquist at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts on February 13 and 14, as part of Jazz at the Bolt

IT WAS PRETTY CLEAR that something was up.

At Home, the new duo release from American pianist and singer Champian Fulton and Swedish saxophonist Klas Lindquist, is marked by the ease of the two musicians’ interplay and the depth of their musical rapport. This is easy-to-listen-to jazz but not Easy Listening jazz: close attention reveals finely etched nuances of tone and phrasing, and a shared love of the jazz past that results in familiar-but-fresh interpretations of such standard tunes as “The Very Thought of You”, “Bésame Mucho”, and “My Monday Date”. Even “Tea for Two” is mined for its inherent wit rather than its cornball potential, a feat last accomplished circa 1927 by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. (Doubters, look it up.)

But there’s more to At Home than meets the ears—more than just musical rapport and a shared aesthetic sensibility. Yes, jazz duos are necessarily intimate and conversational, but there’s a palpable warmth here that transcends anything performative. It’s just there, like a hand-spun sweater or a hot toddy on a cold night or a nice, big hug.

So what gives?

Reached in her home state of Oklahoma, Fulton has a ready explanation. “We met in the summer of 2023, at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival,” she says. “I was going to be there with my trio, and the festival had said, ‘Oh, we have a great saxophone player. We’d like to put you two together.’ We met at sound check and then we performed, and then we went on tour that week. I think we did five shows, and immediately I was just blown away by his playing. I thought, ‘Wow!’

“I love horn,” she continues. “I play in a trio a lot, but I’ve recorded with [local sax star] Cory Weeds, and I’ve recorded a lot with my father on trumpet and flugelhorn, and I love having a horn in my band. But not just any horn: the right horn! And then I found out that Klas had a nonet, this nine-piece band, and I became very interested in that. I went, ‘Oh, he’s also a great arranger. Maybe we could do a nonet and it could feature me…’ I had all these ideas, and I immediately started calling him for gigs. ‘Oh, can you come to California? Can you come to New York? Can you do this? Can you do that?’ We started talking more and more and found a very good musical relationship, where our ideas fit well together. We liked working together; it was very natural.

“That’s how it started out. But I will tell you that we did get engaged on New Year’s Eve, so we’re getting married. And I’m very happy!”

Reached in Stockholm via Zoom, Lindquist is equally delighted. After being congratulated, he beams and holds a hand up to the camera; it sports a plain but substantial golden band. No more need be said about that, but the Swedish saxophonist is perfectly happy to talk about his fiancee’s musical charms.

“I think that we are similar, in that we both started to listen to jazz very early on,” he explains. “Even when I was eight or nine, I started to listen to jazz music, and the first CD I ever bought was Charlie Parker’s Now’s the Time. And my first idols, when I started playing the saxophone, were Charlie Parker and Johnny Hodges. I think Champian was, in a way, similar to that, but it was maybe even more extreme, because she started when she was, like, six, and she was around all these great jazz musicians. I wasn’t really, here in Sweden. But that is one reason we have the same taste in jazz. We very often agree on what we think is good, and we both love the depth in jazz music.”

Champian Fulton. Photo by Margherita Andreani

“She is like an alpine skier when she is onstage and she is playing the piano. She throws herself out.”

As a performer, Lindquist continues, Fulton “has good timing. She’s got an insane technique in the vocal; her vocal technique is amazing. She’s a brilliant piano player. And this might sound weird, but she is like a skier that goes downhill. Is that an alpine skier? So she is like an alpine skier when she is onstage and she is playing the piano. She throws herself out.”

Lindquist pauses to make a whooshing sound, like a skier cutting a schuss through fresh powder. “I mean, we did 15 sets at [New York City’s fabled jazz club] Birdland this Christmas; she sang right through 15 sets, five days in a row, and no problem at all. She’s very secure in her vocal technique, and she’s not scared at all, especially when she plays the piano. She just jumps right into it. With fast tempos and stuff like that, she’s amazing, and the crowd loves her.”

Local crowds will have three opportunities to test Lindgren’s hypothesis, beginning at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts on February 13, when he and Fulton will kick off local jazz entrepreneur Weeds’s annual Jazz at the Bolt mini-festival by debuting a new big-band project with the all-star Vancouver Jazz Orchestra. The two will return to the Bolt for an early matinee on Valentine’s Day, offering an appropriately intimate reprise of their At Home duo, before heading over to Frankie’s Jazz Club to play in a quartet setting with local musicians on Saturday night.

“I love playing with big bands,” Fulton says, sounding excited by the prospect of the Vancouver Jazz Orchestra set. “I started off my career in New York, and my very first album, which came out in 2007, is actually with a big band. I’ve always liked that format. but it’s a little bit tricky because a lot of arrangers don’t know how to feature me, because it’s piano and voice. So it’s always been sort of a dream of mine to find a collaborator who understood my vision of what I wanted. Klas understands that I want both instruments to be at the forefront of the arrangements—and I like to play instrumental tunes also, where the piano is featured and where I get the opportunity to comp behind soloists. So it’s a new thing, but a thing I’ve had in my mind for a long time.

“I get these ideas, like creative or artistic ideas, and then I tell them to people and they’re like, ‘Wow, really? How are you going to make that work?’” she adds, laughing. “And then I’ll figure out a way. So when Cory came to me with this idea about Jazz at the Bolt, he mentioned the Vancouver Jazz Orchestra, and I was like, ‘Well, you know, I want to start a big-band project, so let’s do that.’ And then I told Klas, and he went, ‘But we’re not ready!’ Because this was a year ago. But he and I both work well with a deadline in mind, a performance deadline, and so we just finalized the setlist and all the arrangements last week.” 

In other words, you’ll hear it here first, and it should be both thrilling and lovely.

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