A note from an old friend led to an album loaded with hometown connections for jazz musician Brenda Earle Stokes.
The Sarnia-born pianist, singer and teacher, who had been based in New York City for 18 years, has released Solo Sessions Volume 1, an 11-track recording of solo piano and vocals recorded in a single afternoon in June at the Sarnia Library Theatre.
It began when Adam Miner, a Sarnia musician and recording engineer she knew from when they were high school students at Northern Collegiate, emailed Stokes “out of blue.”
Miner had just recorded music with their former high school band teacher, David Nichols, on the library theatre’s grand piano and figured out a “really sweet setup” for recording there, Stokes said.
“He sort of pitched it to me, ‘If you’re ever in Sarnia, and you want to do some recording, let me know.’”
Stokes and her seven-year-old son were planning a visit home to Sarnia to spend time with her father in June, so she and Miner booked a session at the theatre, thinking they might get a couple of demos out of it.
“At the end of four hours, we had recorded two or three takes of 11 different songs,” she said, “and Adam said, ‘I hate to tell you this, I think we just recorded an album.’”