Elizabeth Shepherd, pianist and singer-songwriter from Canada, has forged a personal sonic identity through the fusion of modern jazz, funk, soul, samba, and blues, steadily attracting a widening listenership. The daughter of Salvation Army ministers, she grew up immersed equally in brass-band traditions and current dance and classical repertoires. Her foremost jazz touchstones include Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Ahmad Jamal, Alice Coltrane, Abdullah Ibrahim, Abbey Lincoln, Sarah Vaughan, and Mark Murphy. Formal training took her across continents to conservatories in Alberta and British Columbia as well as institutions in France, yet she ultimately earned a piano degree from McGill University in Montreal. Although she initially planned to enter music therapy, Shepherd moved back to Toronto after finishing her studies in 2004 and took a job waiting tables at a piano bar until the proprietor offered her the stage in place of her tray. She has since performed across numerous Toronto venues such as the Rex Hotel, the Montreal Bistro, the Supermarket, and the Distillery District. Further afield she has appeared at Tokyo’s Cotton Club, London’s Jazz Cafe, Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide program on BBC Radio, and Matt Galloway’s Here & Now on CBC Radio. In 2006 she earned a Juno Award nomination for her debut album Start to Move, issued on Do Right Records and produced by John Kong; Peterson later ranked it the year’s third-best vocal jazz release. The 2007 follow-up Besides assembled remixes, a rendition of the jazz standard “Midnight Sun,” and an after-hours treatment of Pierre Leduc’s “Soya.” Her third release, Parkdale, arrived in 2008 and featured interpretations of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” alongside the standards “Con Alma” and “Long As You’re Living”; Benedic Lamdin of Nostalgia 77 served as producer. Shepherd performed on acoustic and Fender Rhodes pianos, supported by bassist Scott Kemp, drummer Colin Kingsmore, tenor saxophonist Mark Hanslip, trumpeter William Sperandei, percussionist Roman Tome, and guitarist Reg Schwager. The 2010 album Heavy Falls The Night contained a single cover: the track “Seven Bucks,” co-produced by DJ Mitsu the Beats, while Shepherd handled production on the remaining songs. The project earned a long-list spot for Canada’s Polaris Music Prize. Rewind, her fourth album, appeared in 2012 and presented entirely reimagined jazz and pop standards that had shaped her early listening, rendered in her characteristic funky pop-jazz idiom; although nine sidemen participated, only two or three performed on any given track. She recorded the set while eight months pregnant, and it received another Juno nomination. Following a period devoted to her newborn daughter, Shepherd reentered the studio in 2014. The Signal represented, at least initially, a striking stylistic shift: more melodically and harmonically intricate, it was conceived as a unified album in the manner of 1970s releases rather than a sequence of separate tracks. Among its all-star contributors, African jazz guitarist Lionel Lueke, known for work with Herbie Hancock and Gretchen Parlato, appeared on two selections. The Signal was released on September 30.
