Liesa Norman

On paper, Liesa Norman reads like a Darren Star creation. She is a former model and actress who once played a Bond girl in the videogame 007: The World Is Not Enough. She has her Doctorate in flute performance. She’s played with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. She’s released a classical/jazz album with her duo Forbidden Flutes. (www.forbiddenflutes.com) She’s had her compositions published in the USA. (Falls House Press) She’s played with club DJs has an experimental organic electronica ban...

On paper, Liesa Norman reads like a Darren Star creation. She is a former model and actress who once played a Bond girl in the videogame 007: The World Is Not Enough. She has her Doctorate in flute performance. She’s played with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. She’s released a classical/jazz album with her duo Forbidden Flutes. (www.forbiddenflutes.com) She’s had her compositions published in the USA. (Falls House Press) She’s played with club DJs has an experimental organic electronica band called Beatthief — a cross between St. Germain and Massive Attack. She studied piano since 5, and flute since 10. She scored the music for the award-winning BBC feature, What If Drugs Were Legal? She has her orange belt in karate. And more recently, she has co-written and recorded her debut album and discovered along the way that she has a voice — a really lovely voice — flexible enough to handle Madonna-style club tracks, sultry jazz and ethereal pop, with funk, middle eastern and hip hop flourishes thrown in. She’s also discovered a songwriting ability to marry the flute with her pop sensibility, which is no small feat in this age of bubblegum style over artistry. On June 12, when her self-titled debut album is released, the world will learn the story of how the lovely symphony flutist became a pop singer. And no, we are not making this stuff up. Liesa Norman is the real thing, and judging from the strengths of her debut album, she will be demanding the world’s attention because she has created a uniquely haunting yet propulsive work of experimental pop. Fans who appreciate Tori Amos’ dramatic piano lines, Feist’s offbeat bohemian frankness, or even Bjork’s sonic quirks, will find a kinship with Liesa Norman, who’s also a bit of the wacky banshee when it comes to lending her vocals to tracks devoted to the adrenaline-fuelled dance floor or dark, jazzy nuances. In person, Liesa Norman is as amiable and easy going as you’d expect from a girl who grew up on the West Coast and never let the modeling or acting get in the way of her drive to make innovative, eclectic music. Those glamour gigs merely paid the bills so she could focus on a performing and recording career. Even when working on the runway or modeling for print ads, Norman never abandoned her musical roots. It was a gradual evolution to pop music that began when she played flute alongside DJs in clubs. “The freakiest thing you can do as a classical musician is take away your music, and improvise,” she said, seated in a Vancouver coffee shop, dressed casually in jeans and T-shirt, free of make-up, diving into a giant cinnamon bun. “And it was so loud in there and everyone was so drunk they couldn’t hear what I was doing,” she adds, laughing. “So I literally experimented with that and got more comfortable outside the classical realm.” Norman has been surprised by the shocked reaction to her use of flute in pop music, which, she insists, is nothing revolutionary. She points out that the use of flute in rock ‘n’ roll was already accomplished in the 70s by Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull fame. And the flute has had a long-standing role in the world of jazz fusion. For Norman, it’s simply a matter of using an instrument for creative expression, whether it be flute, piano or her vocals. These are the tools of her trade. They say that luck is really the moment when preparation meets opportunity, and Norman can relate. The years of sacrifice and devoted studying and performing paid off. It was while working at Canadian Music Week that she met Dave Thompson, an Aussie who’d played in a series of rock bands. The two struck up a friendship and Thompson became Norman’s producer and creative sparring partner for the sessions that would become her self-titled debut, released on Prism Music and distributed by Universal Music Norman had holed up in a North Bay cottage last year, and in solitude, discovered that she had as much faith in herself as a vocalist and songwriter as a flutist. Thompson would drop in when he wasn’t on the road, and over the course of a month, the duo wrote the music, and Norman wrote the lyrics and sang her heart out. The pair also played piano, keyboards, bass, guitar, flute, drums, and Thompson added programming and back-up vocals to the mix. When it was done, they re-recorded the entire project in a Vancouver studio, then sent it to New York to be mixed by Grammy-award-winning engineer Ken Lewis. The result is an eclectic blend of pop and dance music infused with Thompson’s love of hip hop and Norman’s own diverse background studies in jazz fusion, electronica and rock. As for her flute, it plays a subtle role on the album, and in some parts, even takes on the sound of an electric guitar. “When I turn on the radio it all sounds the same — every song sounds exactly the same and that drives me crazy,” says Norman. “And I do realize that I come from a slightly different perspective. I love to hear weird and wonderful things together.” It’s true that Norman’s is not the standard radio fare by any stretch. But she’s not building a career on sonic clichés, either, which is good news for any weary music fan. “I just know that you have to be honest musically and emotionally,” she says, “because if it’s not you, nobody’s going to buy it.”