(Reprinted from the October 2024 issue of Downbeat. Photo: Seung Yull Nah)

Singer Youn Sun Nah noticed something interesting about the title of Elles, her newest Warner Music release. The word elles, French for “they/them” in its feminine form, might refer to les chansons, the album’s 10 songs, or les voix, the many voices represented on the recording. Both of these would take feminine pronouns. Her intent, however, was to honor 10 quintessential singers—all women. Also elles.     

“There are three meanings in this album title,” said Seoul-based Nah, speaking in a phone interview with Downbeat from Paris, where she was on tour through mid-August.

“I didn't plan to record only songs by female singers. I just picked songs that I really love,” she continued. “And it's funny—I realized that most of the songs I selected were sung by women. So, maybe these are the singers who inspired me to become who I am now.”

How Nah became who she is now—one of our most respected contemporary jazz singer-songwriters—happened circuitously. The daughter of professional musicians, Nah first performed in musical theater in her native Korea before moving to Paris to study jazz. There, she began to synthesize her many musical interests into a distinctive sound, and today, though more known in Europe and Asia than in the US, Nah has 12 albums to her credit, has claimed several prestigious awards internationally, and follows a near-constant touring schedule.

Alongside this pull toward singular, iconoclastic vocalists, Nah had also been wanting to do a duo album—a formation that would particularly suit the material she’d chosen. On the advice of Tomek Miernowski, multi-instrumentalist/producer, she asked pianist John Cowherd to collaborate with her on the eclectic set list. Miernowski’s call was a good one: Cowherd implicitly understood the pianistic demands of such a reduced setting and knew how to make considered use of its spaciousness.

“John is like a living jukebox,” Nah said. “For instance, when I recorded the song ‘La Foule,’ I asked him, ‘Why don't we record this as if we were in a little cabaret in France?’ And he played it immediately as if for that audience.”

Nah, too, can turn on a dime musically. In Nah’s expressive voice, this Edith Piaf favorite transforms into a passionate statement about the ephemeral nature of connection, expertly rendered as a French chanson. Yet it stands in surprising opposition to the tune that precedes it on the album: “Coisas Da Terra,” a piano-vocalese exposition first popularized by Portuguese singer Maria João. Like João, Nah settles comfortably into a breakneck bebop section, but in the last half she veers off into a rangy, extended free riff. Such command of disparate idioms is wonderfully disarming, and Nah’s career is an ongoing study in contrasts like this. In this case, however, her changeability itself makes a point.

“I love João’s voice,” she said, noting how the many-sided singer could sound like a child whispering one minute and car brakes screeching in the next. “She showed me that in jazz vocals, there are no limits.”

Nah explored her own limits further with jazz-adjacent renditions of two pop classics—Grace Slick’s “White Rabbit” and Björk’s “Cocoon.” From the original auteurs on these two tracks she borrows a deft delivery of mood, with minimalism and electronic enhancement serving the intimacy of the lyrics. She doesn’t imitate these singers’ vocals so much as bend her own to a like purpose: the revelation of intensely personal experience.

She does the same on the album’s most traditional tracks, despite using distinctive vocal techniques on each. The first, a wistful “My Funny Valentine,” conjures the classical shadings of the Sarah Vaughn version that inspired Nah’s own; Nah especially admires “the precise way that [Vaughn] handles a note, with long breaths and power in every pitch. She would sing every single note as if she were a violin player, with a different intensity at the beginning, middle, and end.”   

The second, a gut-wrenching “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” from opera singer Jesse Norman’s arrangement, evokes all the pathos of that live rendition, without the large-scale demands of Norman’s platform. With Nah’s barely-there phonation, the spiritual is a private reflection rather than a wail—though equally as moving.    

“Most of the songs that I love are very sad ballads—dramatic and romantic and melancholic,” she said. “From a very early age, I was very moved by lyric classical singers like Maria Callas—singers who express a lot of emotions.”

Even so, the album offers many moments that actively counter its emotional density. Take “I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango),” a reworking of Brazilian singer Astor Piazzolla's "Libertango” via Grace Jones. Following the lead of the 1980s cultural icon, Nah adds eccentric touches to the jaunty melody, with French-language overdubs, vocal doubling of the rhythmic accompaniment, and a stratospheric operatic run in the outro (“I really had fun playing this song,” she said.).

And on Sheila Jordan’s “Baltimore Oriole,”—an insouciant blues tune with cheeky spoken interjections—Nah came to understand that not all jazz vocalists need to sing with low, husky voices. During her early years as a jazz newcomer in Paris, this realization helped her to understand her own rarified sound, which at times seemed at odds with the darker timbre of the singers she admired.  (“Sheila has a completely enchanting, light voice—it’s very alive,” Nah observed.)

Finally, from Nina Simone—idolized for her strong, gritty vocals—Nah took the anthemic “Feeling Good,” which softens under Nah’s sensitive touch and gentle kalimba accompaniment. What Nah doesn’t temper, however, is the defiance that Simone projects on the original.

“Nina Simone is like a musical shaman for me,” Nah said. “I'm consistently moved by her emotionally charged voice. It’s timeless.”

Nah closes the album with the only selection that has been in her repertoire for years: Roberta Flack’s 1970s hit, “Killing Me Softly.” In her shows, Nah sings the tune alongside a music box held up to the microphone—a charming twist on an already swoon-worthy ballad. The first time she played it this way, the audience began to sing along.

“From that moment, I’ve played this song wherever I go,” she said.