Tia Fuller: The Brilliance of a Diamond

Interview, News, From the Magazine, Tia Fuller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette

By Ted Panken I Sep. 28, 2018

Tia Fuller’s most recent album is *Diamond Cut* (Mack Avenue).
(Photo: Jimmy & Dena Katz)

On the anthemic Buddy Johnson ballad “Save Your Love For Me,” Fuller sings through the horn with a pearl-like tone that Carrington described as “like a bird or a butterfly, soulful, sweet-sounding, but not necessarily like r&b.”

“Terri helped me with this,” Fuller said. “When we were on the road, she’d tell me, ‘Tia, you don’t have to bear down all the time—find the sweet spot.’ I had the lyrics on the music stand, so I could embrace them and take ownership. I’d been reluctant to tap into some sweeter parts of my sound. That’s from the sitting-in I did earlier on in New York—the psychological dimension of being a woman in those situations, and wanting to play all your stuff, thinking, ‘You’ve got to dig in.’”

Another psychological aspect of womanhood informs “Queen’s Intuition,” a flowing waltz textured by DeJohnette’s painterly brushes. “I wanted to celebrate the process of listening to the inner voice, that ‘Aha!’ moment my mother described as ‘I can always feel something,’” Fuller said. “That happened to her during her forties, where I am now. I’m learning to trust that sense.”

“Crowns Of Gray,” a clarion ballad, celebrates “the royalty my parents have been in my life.” It begins, Fuller said, with the exact same interval as Cannonball Adderley’s famous version of “Stars Fell On Alabama.” “That’s the first song I transcribed when I got to Spelman,” she continued. “We toured for a week, and I played that exact solo every day. Here, I combined it with ‘Nancy With The Laughing Face,’ which I played duo with my dad.”

That she’s paid close attention to bassist and collaborator Holland’s music is evident on “The Coming”—a programmatic depiction of the African-American diasporic experience, which opens with a section inspired by a bass line he played underneath a Chris Potter saxophone solo on one of his quintet albums—and on the gorgeous “Tears Of Santa Barbara,” a soprano saxophone-bass duo introduced by Holland’s arco solo. “I wrote that specifically to feature Dave to play his melodies along with my melody,” Fuller said. “I was in Santa Barbara, behind the stage, right after sound check. I was crying about something. My way of working through it was to play that melody over and over again.”

In a conversation several years ago, Fuller spoke of transitional events in her life occurring at three-year intervals. Asked now what she sees as her next step, she mentioned a nascent project with drummer Nikki Glaspie, a Beyoncé bandmate who also plays with saxophonist Maceo Parker. “We’re brainstorming for possibilities, trying to get music together,” Fuller said.

More broadly, Fuller intends to coalesce her interests in hardcore jazz and social music. “I again want to reach beyond what I’ve already done,” she said. “What’s ironic is that I wanted to put my stamp on the jazz world, because I knew playing with Beyoncé could turn into, ‘OK, now she’s a pop saxophonist.’ But I’ve always loved both areas. My writing always contained elements of r&b and Latin and even classical. So, moving into this next realm and making a seamless transition to another genre, for lack of a better term, reflects my evolution as a complete human being and a musician.” DB