Jazz vocalist Laurin Talese debuts ‘Museum of Living Stories’ at Kimmel Cultural Campus

Sitting in a Mount Airy coffee shop on an uncharacteristically warm February morning, Laurin Talese is happy to be back among people. Half the customers who walk through the door greet her, and are met with a beaming smile and a warm hello.

“I’m not an introvert,” the singer was quick to admit. “I love talking to people, I love running my mouth. But something I learned about myself over the pandemic is that I also value my quiet time. I value the time that I have to observe my thoughts without having to judge them, to form some sort of opinion about myself or the world.”

On Saturday Talese will take the stage of the Kimmel Cultural Campus’ Perelman Center. She’s no stranger to the venue, having performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, been involved as an educator with the institution’s Creative Music Program, and presented a concert by one of her idols, the late Nancy Wilson. But this time the spotlight will be all hers, as she premieres music from Museum of Living Stories, a new set of music commissioned by Chamber Music America.

Prior to the 2020 shutdown, Talese had been embracing new experiences as a “cultural ambassador” for the State Department’s American Music Abroad program, bringing soulful jazz to new audiences in Montenegro, Ukraine, and Poland. Suddenly she found herself with an empty calendar, unable to travel any farther than the wooded trails surrounding her apartment.

Embracing the opportunity for introspection, Talese saw parallels between her meditative hikes and the experience of visiting an art museum. “I always think about how nonjudgmental and reverential going to a museum is,” she explained.

“As an average layperson, I just take the art in as it is. I just think, ‘Somebody actually saw this in their minds and made it with their hands, and now I get to consume it.’ You’re removed from the pop culture view of commenting on what that person ate for breakfast this morning or posted this on Instagram. Walking through the Wissahickon [is similar], just observing this beautiful path with trees to my right and trees to my left without having to describe it or answer to anybody.”

With Museum of Living Stories, Talese aims to take a similarly nonjudgmental view of the human experience. Unlike her 2016 debut, Gorgeous Chaos, the upcoming album looks beyond the autobiographical to tell empathetic stories of drug addiction, incarceration, injustice, and adoption.

“My first album was just about all the stupid things I thought about boys from 18 to 20-something years old,” she said with a laugh. “The songs were all about how I stumbled and tripped and fell all over love. But these songs are about life. When I was younger I had a tendency to villainize people based on the things that they experienced. Hopefully as you grow and mature, you realize that people do the best that they can with what they have, and you can’t always assign a person’s character or morals to a decision that they had to make while they were just trying to survive.”

The Chamber Music America grant, part of the organization’s New Jazz Works program, came as a lifeline to Talese in the midst of the shutdown. She’ll perform the music this weekend at the Kimmel as well as the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., then head into the studio in the next few months. The grant afforded her the ability to lead a larger band than usual; Saturday night’s ensemble will include pianist Mike King, bassist Eric Wheeler, guitarist Ben O’Neill, drummer Anwar Marshall, and a horn section led by trumpeter Chris Stevens.

The new music is intimately tied to the experiences of the last few years. “Quiet,” a paradoxically antic tune about tuning out the tumult of the world, was penned on a park bench in Carpenter’s Woods. “Rain Song” is a bossa nova-inspired piece written in reaction to the police killing of George Floyd, composed over a series of sleepless nights incurred by viewing the video of his death. “In Brazilian music,” Talese said, “I find that they talk about the most catastrophic betrayals and sadness in the lyrics, but the vibrant music always feels like it’s honoring life.”

A native of Cleveland, Talese studied at the University of the Arts and embraced Philadelphia. . She serves as vice president of the city’s chapter of the Recording Academy and is on the board of Jazz Philadelphia. Despite her world travels, Talese adamantly counts Philly “in my top five cities, because of the mix of gritty energy on our streets with the beauty of the arts. Our heroes and artists are so dynamic. There’s just something in the water here that you can’t access anywhere else.”

Laurin Talese, 8 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 19, Kimmel Cultural Campus, 300 S. Broad St., $29-$49, 215-893-1999, kimmelculturalcampus.org