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Biali trio performs in Nelson Saturday

Canadian jazz star Laila Biali, who performs at the Capitol Theatre this weekend, remarks on motherhood, swimming in Kootenay Lake — and working with Sting
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Canadian jazz star Laila Biali has been busy professionally and personally since she last performed in West Kootenay over five years ago. She appears at the Capitol Theatre on Saturday.

The last time singer-songwriter-pianist Laila Biali performed in West Kootenay, she literally jumped in the lake. It was 2005 at the Kaslo Jazz Festival, and after her gig on the floating stage, she went for a swim. “Where else can I do that?” she laughs. “It was amazing.”

Back then she was a highly-touted emerging artist with one album and several awards to her credit. Since then, she’s added to her resume two more albums as well as marriage, motherhood, a Juno nomination, and a tour with Sting.

“I can’t believe how much has happened in such a short length of time,” Biali, 30, said in a phone interview this week from her parents’ home in West Vancouver. Although she now lives in Brooklyn, she was back home visiting ahead of a “petit tour” of B.C. and Alberta that reaches Nelson on Saturday.

She’ll be showcasing songs from her trio’s last album, Tracing Light, released last October, which includes originals as well as standards and covers of contemporary songs by k.d. lang, Billy Joel, and Daniel Lanois. (It’s up for a Juno for vocal jazz album of the year.)

This will be the first time, however, that her son Joshua, born last June, won’t join her.

“After much discussion, my husband [drummer Ben Wittman] and I decided that given the drive through mountain ranges in what is still the thick of winter, it wouldn’t be so wise to have a baby in back,” she says. Instead, her husband will babysit at home while she is on the road.

Biali learned she was expecting her son while touring as a back-up singer with Sting — an experience she calls “remarkable ... He’s an absolutely exemplary musician and a wonderful human being.” (He also took a personal interest in her pregnancy — once referring to her husband as “the father of MY baby.”)

Hired to perform on a companion DVD to Sting’s If on a Winter’s Night album, Biali found herself staying at his villa in Tuscany for several days.

“You can imagine they were just a dream. Hanging out and rehearsing with Sting for hours daily, going on walks of the grounds with him. It was so personal and wonderful.”

From there they flew to Durham Cathedral in England where the DVD was filmed, and afterward she joined him for concerts in the U.S. and Europe. They have kept in touch, and he was delighted when she brought her newborn to his show in Toronto.

“During intermission, he was just hanging out with the baby and was so excited about the little guy. He doesn’t forget who he works with.”

Biali sent him a copy of Tracing Light, “and he wrote me a lovely email while he was on tour in Australia.”

Despite having performed for much larger crowds at much larger venues, Biali says she is no less thrilled to lead her own group in a more intimate setting.

“It’s really exciting to have the opportunity to play a community like Nelson and such a beautiful theatre,” she says. “That to me is just as important as playing a stadium with Sting. People still want to know I can put on my own show.”

The Laila Biali Trio — including Larnell Lewis on drums and Adam Thomas on bass — appears at the Capitol Theatre on Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults and $16 for full-time students.