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There are only three covers on Calgary jazz singer Caity Gyorgy’s cheerfully named fifth album, Hello! How Are You?

They Say It’s Spring was originally recorded by Blossom Dearie in the 1950s. Baubles, Bangles and Beads is from the 1953 musical Kismit and is probably best known as a Peggy Lee song. It Never Entered My Mind is a 1940 show tune by Rodgers and Hart that has been recorded by everyone from Miles Davies to Ella Fitzgerald and Stan Getz.

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What is perhaps most impressive is that Gyorgy not only makes these classics her own, but that they fit so nicely with her own compositions on the album. It Never Entered My Mind is a sultry ballad, played with what Gyorgy calls a “grown-up tempo.” Baubles, Bangles and Beads has a more playful vibe, recalling the sprightly bebop vibes of Betty Carter.

“When you are doing standards, especially these days, these songs have been recorded and sung hundreds of times in most cases, so I had to make it different,” she says. “A lot of it is is very through-composed because I have a very specific idea in mind of how I want things to sound and I like that journey you can take with the arrangements. So Baubles, Bangles and Beads and They Say It’s Spring are two songs where I knew if I do standards I have to do them in a way that hasn’t been done before and is very reflective of who I am as a musician and who I’m inspired by.”

As with her past albums, Hello! How Are You? showcases both Gyorgy’s impressive skills as a singer, composer  and bandleader and.her deep knowledge of and reverence for what has come before. Since she is only 26, there is clearly a lot of jazz tradition to soak up for the Juno-winning artist, who splits her time between Calgary and Montreal.

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This is the first jazz-quartet album and features Anthony D’Alessandro on piano, Thomas Hainbuch on bass, and Jacob Wutzke on drums. It was recorded in her hometown at the National Music Centre. While both the originals and covers have sophisticated and elegant arrangements, Gyorgy admits that many of the songs also have, by necessity, a bit of a spontaneous vibe. Part of the motivation was to build up a new body of work because she had grown a little tired of playing the material from Featuring, her Juno-winning 2023 album, while on tour.

“Some of the songs I improvised in anticipation of the tour, like a few days before,” she says. “It was like ‘Oh, I really have to get things done.’ You know, diamonds are made under pressure. So I got them done, in some cases two days before our first show. But the band is fantastic, so they’re used to me doing that sort of thing like coming up with an idea and developing it for the next song.”

The spirited but elegant Colloquially came from Gyorgy’s simple desire to base a song around a fun word that she wanted to sing. The title track, fuelled by Hainbuch’s driving stand-up bass, was improvised in just over a minute.

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“I was jamming to make something for TikTok with the drummer, Jacob,” she says. “He was playing brushes on a snare practise pad and I said just give me a 4/4 beat and I’m going to improvise something. I pressed record on my phone and basically wrote the entire song. How it appears on the record is very, very similar. Things like that were kind of fun.”

Of course, to get to the level where songs come so freely doesn’t happen overnight and Gyorgy has been a conscientious student of jazz since she was in her final year of high school at Central Memorial and discovered the genre after joining the jazz choir. She then left for Toronto for Humber College’s jazz program. As with past albums, Hello! How Are You? showcases Gyorgy’s love of scat singing, but even that improvised form required a lot of prep work over the years.

“When people ask me how I learned to scat, I say I transcribed hundreds of instrumental solos,” she says. “I know hundreds of jazz standards and having the knowledge of the harmony and the melody and, most importantly, the way the lyrics are written is incredibly helpful in being able to write my own songs.”

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The approach has helped make Gyorgy one of the most acclaimed young jazz performers in the country, although she is also making waves globally. She will be touring Japan and the United States later this year.

Since graduating from Humber, she has amassed an eclectic body of work that has included 2023’s You’re Alike, You Two, which featured Gyorgy and pianist Mark Limacher performing Jerome Kern composition. Featuring followed her 2022 EP, Now Pronouncing: Caity Gyorgy, which she recorded  in Toronto while still a student at Humber. The prolific artist has another album recorded with Limacher of American songwriter Frank Loesser, who wrote the music and lyrics for  Broadway musicals Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and the standard Baby It’s Cold Outside. But before she releases that, she is waiting to hear back about a grant for another project of original compositions written for a 41-piece orchestra and recorded at the National Music Centre.

“In the last year, I’ve been so inspired by a lot of the Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey recordings of the 1940s,” she says. “I adore those songs and I love the orchestrations.”

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While she only 26, Gyorgy has set a very high standard for herself. You’re Alike, You Two was nominated for a best vocal jazz album Juno in 2023 and it was the first time in three years she didn’t win the trophy. Both Featuring and Pronouncing Caity Gyorgy won the award in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

“It’s definitely very motivating,” she says. “It’s quite an honour to receive success on a national and in some cases international level and it’s also helped me advance things in my career in a little more expedited way because when I have those awards and accolades on my resume, people are able to trust I am able to put on a good show and write another good album. So it’s incredibly helpful. I have my two Junos just sitting on top of my dresser in my apartment in Montreal. I think they are very pretty and I’m grateful for them.”

Hello! How Are You? Is now available.

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