Back when she was six or seven, Grace Kelly was Grace Chung — and every Friday night, her father would surprise her with another cinematic classic. In one, she saw who she'd become.
"We would go to our favorite Chinese restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts, and then we would go to Blockbuster right after and we'd pick out a DVD for that night," Kelly — not a stage name, but her government — tells GRAMMY.com. "So, he picked out High Society one night, and that's the first time I saw Princess Grace Kelly in a movie."
The 1956 musical rom-com was Kelly's last before she became Princess of Monaco at 26. The saxophonist was floored. "I was so in love with her — and just her beauty, her elegance," she adds, aglow. So, I went to kindergarten the next day and I told my teachers, 'I'm Princess Grace Kelly,' and I would sign my name like that."
In High Society, the future Princess memorably sang Cole Porter's "True Love." Today, at 31, Kelly took up her own scepter of sorts. She sings "True Love" on Grace Kelly With Strings: At The Movies, her new album of cinematic bangers from across the decades.
Out March 1, At the Movies features selections from Kelly's own lifetime, like Pirates of the Caribbean and Mission: Impossible; near it, like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Back to the Future; and her parents' generation, like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
What ties it all together is Kelly's sparkling charisma, and contributions from a consortium of heavy hitters: producer Bryan Carter, arrangers Charlie Rosen and Steven Feifke, special guests in trumpeter Sean Jones and guitarist Cory Wong.
Whether or not you're a jazz or film buff, there's plenty to glean from the following conversation with Kelly about the movies, social media, keeping her cool amid logistical insanity, and much more.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
E.T., Pirates of the Caribbean, Mission: Impossible — your album reflects the millennial cinematic canon.
Right? I mean, there's so many memories there.
And Bryan Carter — who co-arranged [the play] Some Like It Hot with Charlie Rosen and produced this album — we are both such Disney kids. Working on this album, we were both so excited. Because these movies, like you said, hold a really special place in our hearts.
I guess I didn't really realize that, but for a lot of the cuts, it's like going down a millennial memory lane. We had a blast just sending memes of Back to the Future and working on the music.
Tell me more about your relationship with these tunes.
It was very hard to pick the songs, because there are so many great songs from the cinema. ut I did pick ones that either had a very personal touch to me. For example, "True Love" is the only song that Princess Grace Kelly sang on screen [in 1956's High Society]. So, we covered that one; it's a beautiful Cole Porter song.
And then a song like "Soul Bossa Nova" — I mean, I love Austin Powers, and I'm also a really big fan of Quincy Jones. So I was like, That's going to be a bop. And then Charlie Rosen arranged that one.
Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies — so I was like, "Well, we have to do 'The Power of Love.'" I've been really lucky to join Huey Lewis on stage a couple of times and he's been a supporter of mine. So, that felt extra special, to pick that one.
And, again, I'm such a Disney kid, and Bryan is as well. So, that was tough because, I mean, the Disney medley's already 15 minutes long. We had to cut two songs from the original one, because it would've been, like, 25 minutes.
When did it become clear that this was the kind of project you wanted to pursue?
I've actually had this idea in the back of my head for a while. I really wanted to do a project covering some of my favorite movie music.
This idea was born years ago when I was talking to a great radio personality, Ron Della Chiesa. He said, "There are so many great songs from movies, and you've got the name Grace Kelly." He didn't know my love for the princess, but of course, when he was even bringing up this idea, I was like, "Yeah, I know Grace Kelly, and I love Grace Kelly."
And the album basically came to be because I was approached by the Barclay Theater in Irvine, California, to put on a debut performance of something that I've never performed before. So that was a great opportunity to be like, "Well, I have this idea about presenting movie music" — and they loved it.
I've also always wanted to do an album that featured strings. One of my favorite jazz albums of all time is Charlie Parker With Strings; it was a really important album for me in my development of playing the saxophone.
So, we brought those two concepts together, the movie music and then strings — which I feel like fits so perfectly musically. And that was the impetus for creating the album.
Charlie Parker with Strings is a masterpiece, and it's so accessible. I feel like sometimes there's this perception of Bird where it's like, "The recordings are too rough," or "I respect it more than I listen to it." But that's just plain beautiful music.
I know what you mean. Because when people say a similar thing to me about bebop or jazz, I tell them, "OK, but listen, this album is, it could be a good entry point for some people who don't feel like they can listen to jazz, because it's just so beautiful."
And it's interesting that at the time when he released it, some of the people were saying it's too much of a commercial project, the jazz community did not embrace it in the way that I feel like we talk about it and embrace it now. Because it's just such a piece of art. It's so beautiful.
At what point did it feel like the project was truly taking shape?
I think when we had the arrangements in hand. Bryan Carter brought on an incredible cast of young arrangers — GRAMMY- and Tony-winning arrangers.
Charlie Rosen created a couple of charts for us — Steven Feifke, Kyle Gordon, a few recent graduates from the Juilliard School of Music who are doing amazing stuff.
So, I think it started to come really clearly into the picture for me when I was having conversations with each arranger, and Bryan figured out which songs each arranger would take on, and what would fit best stylistically.
The next step of that was giving my ideas of what I thought musically should be highlighted. So, I made little videos for each arranger, and I would play my saxophone part, or I would play something on the keys, and then they'd integrate those ideas into the arrangement.
And then, Bryan and I co-arranged the Disney medley. That was just the moment that I was like, Oh my gosh.
Getting even the MIDI files back, and listening to the arrangement, it was like, Holy crap, this is going to be epic.
Can you expound on the importance of Bryan and Steven, and anybody else who was critical to getting this project going?
As our producer — and he arranged a couple of the songs as well — Bryan has really brought this record to new heights. I mean, his ears, his knowledge, his taste is just of the highest caliber — and he will not quit until something is right.
He had spent so many hours even on just one measure of the recording and doing post-production on it. I think him and our mixing and mastering team member, Dave Darlington, who's multi GRAMMY-winning — must have spent at least five full-day sessions just going in and every detail. So, he has absolutely just made this album what it is and the quality of what it is.
All along the way, too, if I was having trouble recording my part, we'd jump onto Zoom sessions and he'd be coaching me through some of the vocal production stuff, getting the best takes out of me. He flew in to L.A. to do our three days, our performance and studio work, and then took a red-eye the next night to be a special guest on Seth Meyers' late night show playing drums.
Our associate producer, Kyle Gordon, also was just so helpful in the studio working with us, and brought a couple of really magical arrangements to the table. The other person who is just such an MVP is Eli Bishop, our co-producer. Eli put together the entire string section for the album. And he recorded, I think, more than a thousand tracks of himself playing violin, viola, cello, guitar, mandolin.
I mean, he plays everything. And he really took the project from the few songs that we were able to record live with the 15 piece string section, he then went home and then did post-production and turned that into a symphony orchestra version with his post-production on it.
Can you talk about the moment where you realized, Holy crap, we did it?
Well, to be honest with you, when we initially did the first recording session, it was such a crazy time. We did the live debut performance at the Barclays Theater in Irvine, California on, I think it was a Thursday or a Friday night.
The next day, we were in the studio recording it. And the afternoon before the live show, we were rehearsing it. And we only had those three days with Bryan because he flew in for that, and he was working on the "Some Like it Hot" Broadway musical.
It was putting people through it. It was a crazy vigorous schedule, and we had so much music to get through.
But that was a huge, huge win for us to then do the show, go into the studio. And then it took about a year — not a consecutive year — but we were working on the post-production for this album after that initial session, we're chipping away at it. And we had some fantastic special guests in Sean Jones and Cory Wong: they recorded their parts as finishing touches.
When I finally had the final master recordings, and I was able to listen to the album from top down in the car, I think that was the moment that it was like, holy s—, this sounds incredible.
I remember FaceTiming Bryan that day, when we sent in our final masters. That moment was just so exciting. We'd call each other and just talk about how proud of the album we were.
How do you keep your head on straight amid such intensity? The jazz world's extremely intense as it is.\
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I would say that deadlines are a frenemy, because thank goodness we had it. That would allow us to just keep doing the next steps and keep getting the next recording in.
I was also going through a move in Los Angeles, and then I was tracking during the day and moving boxes at night, and it was just this very chaotic time. I mean, it's already so busy working on an album, but I wasn't even settled in a place.
But even then I was like, I've got to get this stuff done. I got to get my parts done. And there's something that a deadline just kind of makes you get at it. There was certainly a lot of relief on the other end of being like, Wow, we can breathe and we got it done.
But it's definitely a period of pushing and of stress. And I don't think stress is not always bad. I think it's very essential.
There were moments when we actually had to push back deadlines of things because our distributor wanted certain files and things done, and the music just wasn't there. And I did not want to sacrifice the quality of our music.
Ultimately, we were like, "We've worked so hard on this. It is like 99.5% there. Let's just get it right."
Before we go: you're on the most visible, social media-fueled end of jazz, where the lines between musicians and "content creators" are blurred. How do you negotiate that territory?
I think of creating content as a different bucket than making an album of this quality. I think it is a really powerful tool, to be able to have social media to connect to my fans and to get the word out.
But I also see it for what it is. I like to make content that will be able to reach more people. There's different ways to approach social media, whether it's just to update your fans or are you going for a growth type of trajectory.
And there's always going to be the trolls, getting to the psychological side of it. There's always going to be the haters. Luckily, there are a lot of supporters, and there's a lot of love as well.
It can be really tough. I've had plenty of challenges of getting the haters out of my head, and I try and disassociate a bit from Grace Kelly and go a little bit more third party with it, especially when I'm having a hard time with the hate and the comments, and be like, OK, let me step away. I'm going to turn off all the devices. How do I really feel about this? And am I proud of the music that I'm creating?
And remembering that for every hater, there's so many more supporters and people who are just wanting to see me continue on my path and have said really supportive things.
So, it's a fine balance, but I also try to keep enough time to not be online.So I've been getting a lot better at just kind of spending only a certain amount of time on socials or working on my email to fans.
And then otherwise just turning off, going for a hike, being with friends, working on music, so that it doesn't feel like it's just all-encompassing — a never-ending series of notifications.