Interview: Laura Anglade Announces New Album, SOMETHING'S COMING

Jazz artist Laura Anglade will be back November 13 with her next full-length album, Something's Coming. The singer is coming off a breakout year, earning her second JUNO nomination and first win for Jazz Album of the Year for her 2025 release, Get Out of Town. Laura's music breathes new life into the Great American Songbook, and she's won the hearts of Kristin Chenoweth, Jacob Collier, Michael Bublé, Stephen Colbert, and fans around the world. She recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Kelly Clarkson Show, and after notable performances at Blue Note NYC, Birdland, and Montreal Jazz Fest, she returns with an album exploring the crossover between jazz and musical standards.

Listen to the title track "Something's Coming" and "The Music That Makes Me Dance." With her new recently released single, "Sunday in New York," Laura effortlessly captures the magic of the Big Apple and the city's refusal to ever truly slow down through her one-of-a-kind scatting skills.

We spoke with Laura about the upcoming album.

---

How does it feel to be releasing your new album, Something's Coming, in November?

I have mixed feelings. I am, of course, grateful to be finally sharing this project, but at the same time, the fact that it’s right around the corner is quite daunting. It’s funny, I’m not one of those artists who can release a new album every couple of months. It takes a lot of time for a concept to come to me, then to sit with the repertoire and think about how I want to deliver the stories, which depends on my emotional state during that period.

I’ve been reflecting recently on the idea of “releasing” music. This sounds a bit morbid, but I feel like a part of me dies when I release a project, maybe because it doesn’t belong to me anymore. With that comes a mix of grief and relief. The songs are ready to enter their new stage of life. There’s a sort of mourning that comes with who I was when I recorded it, too, because releasing a project takes about a year, so I’m a very different person now than I was when I recorded it. I suppose that’s part of the beauty that comes with trusting the process.

What was the process that went into putting the album tracks together?

I am really proud of this album. It’s not the most straight-ahead jazz record; it’s more scattered, yet still focused, sincere. I wanted to incorporate a very strong visual experience as well as an auditory one. The album artwork really plays a big part here. With the creative direction of my photographer, Chris Boyle, and stylist Kara Erwin, the Album photoshoot represents all of the creative worlds that exist in my head. I was very influenced by Alice in Wonderland and by the photographer Szilveszter Makó. I feel a strong connection between his work and “Something’s Coming.” What I love about his photographs is that the subject is never really the whole point. He creates an entire world around them, so every little piece is crucial to the finished product. The sets are theatrical, sometimes surreal, and feel almost like scenes from an imagined story.

I think of the album as a collection of different worlds. The repertoire stems from Brazilian, Cuban, classical, to Broadway and Jazz roots and is a compilation of the influences we’ve gathered as a band over the years. Each song has its own character and atmosphere, but there’s a common thread running through all of them: that everything is in service of the lyric. 

Most of the songs on here are well-worn and have lived a whole life on the stage, hence the more cinematic, Broadway approach. I’ve played the parts before. I’ve gotten to know the characters I’m portraying. They are like old friends now. It’s almost not about me at all. I just get to play a part in the vast world that is the Great American Songbook. Collectively, we can create something magical, playful, dream-like, an escape. There is so much more of this world to explore, and I wanted to bring out the immense potential of how deep we can really go into this music.

There’s a palpable musical communication in our band that can only be a result of long-lasting friendships, and you’ll definitely hear that in how immersive the arrangements are. They contain a little bit of each of our personalities, also crucial to the finished product, much like Makó’s images. We arranged a lot of these songs all together in the practice room, and Ben Rosenblum, our pianist and accordionist arranged: Something’s Coming, The Music That Makes Me Dance, Two For The Road, Maybe This Time, and Some Other Time, 

How did the sounds of Broadway help provide inspiration for this album?

I was always part of the theatre programs at school, but I never got the lead roles. I was much too shy. I was always a quiet kid with a huge imagination. Deep down, I knew I had something inside of me that needed to come out. I had a voice that just needed to be properly trained and nurtured. I felt very strongly that I had a lot of emotions that I needed to let go, and I knew that singing was the vehicle for that, even from a young age. I would lock myself in the playroom at home and sing Sara Bareilles, The Police and West Side Story on YouTube using the family desktop computer, trying to inhabit what it felt like to be the main character of my own life story, my little brothers giggling and spying on me behind the door.

I remember landing a background role in my first play in middle school, “Seussical the Musical”. It was nice to feel like I was a part of a community, and I had a lot of fun. So this is my chance to live out the dream of those lead roles, in a way. This album is really headed more in that direction, though it is still very much a Jazz record. A lot of these songs come from shows, and I’m definitely at my most vulnerable, particularly with “Where Is It Written.” 

Even the ones that don’t come from Broadway shows, like “Something to Remember You By,” which switches between Frevo and Samba Brazilian feels, also has a bit of a Michel Legrand musical air to it. That’s the one I made the guys sing with me. They weren’t completely sold on this at first, but they came around, and it turned out so well. We had a blast in the studio. I’m excited to share the footage for that.  I can imagine that as an opener to a show.

What's been on your mind lately?

I’ve been thinking a lot about impermanence. The peace that comes with accepting that everything in life is fleeting. My mom says: “tout est impermanent, le bon comme le mauvais.” which translates to: “everything is temporary, the good and the bad”.
I just entered a new decade, and there are so many things I’m still learning about myself. I’m learning to love myself for the first time, to take care of body and mind, to give myself grace as I figure out what my needs are. I’m learning how to listen…to the music, and in life! I’m going through the motions with both ears open. I’m learning to let fewer people in, or rather, let the right people in, to appreciate my ability to move people, which is something I don’t take for granted, something that is almost separate from me, a duty. There’s a wonderful Nancy Wilson interview my friend showed me, where she talks about the concept of separating her gift from herself.

I’m also quite homesick. I miss France, I’m really leaning into French repertoire again and exploring that part of my identity more.

I’m thinking about cicadas as I write this, their chorus drifting through my apartment window on this hot August day. I find them fascinating. You can hear cicadas trickle in here and there throughout the songs on this album, the way Ben Zweig, our drummer, plays on “Some Other Time”, his brushes emulate cicada wings. The strings on that track also sustain this long, high note that sounds like cicadas singing. I’m a big believer in saving certain songs for the right time, and these songs have lived entire lives before setting foot in the studio. Cicadas live for 17 years. They spend most of their lives underground, and for the last 3 months of their lives, they come up from underground collectively into the world to sing and then die. I see so many parallels in the music. You have to let a song go through its life cycle before judging it.

There’s something so special about having waited to record with this group until now, coming together through song and then releasing the music.

Aside from Something's Coming, do you have any other projects or shows you're working on that you'd like to tell us about?

Yes, there are lots of exciting things on the horizon. We are playing at BRIC Jazz fest as well as an album release show at Birdland (TBA). We’re also going to Japan for the first time, which has been a long-time dream. I’ve always had a passion for Japanese literature and the culture in general, so I really cannot wait to discover this amazing country.

Before that, we’ll be on the West Coast and through the Midwest in the US on two separate tours, hopefully Europe in the new year. I’m so grateful to be performing more. It is a space where I feel the most alive.

I am also exploring composition, which is way out of my comfort zone.  I’ve never had such an itch for it, so I’m just rolling with it. We’ll see if any of this transpires into anything concrete.

---

Photo credit: Chris Boyle

Learn more about the artist online at www.lauraanglade.co

Need more Cabaret Theatre News in your life?
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...