Additional Information
The drummer Valérie Lacombe has just released an album titled State of Garden and Shadow (which I discuss more specifically in this review HERE). On April 29, 2026, at the Lion d’Or in Montreal, she will launch this first album, coincidentally, on International Jazz Day. I spoke with the young artist in the following interview.
PanM360: Hello Valérie. What is your musical background?
Valérie Lacombe: I was introduced to music in elementary school, in an arts-education program in music in Laval, specifically at Des Cèdres school.
PanM360: That’s very funny! My wife teaches at that school!
Valérie Lacombe: Oh really? I was there at the end of the 1990s.
PanM360: She arrived a little later.
Valérie Lacombe: I really enjoyed this journey. I learned a lot there. It’s a solid training program. There were excellent professors, including one named Frédéric Brunel. He also played the piano. I took a few private lessons with him, and he introduced me to jazz a bit. At school, I was learning the violin. I played it for a long time, but I stopped because I didn’t see myself having a career as a professional violinist. I went to University, studying anthropology, and at some point, I missed music, so I decided to enrol in a CEGEP course (at Vanier), on the side, telling myself I would do it for fun.
PanM360: And you chose the drums?
Valérie Lacombe: Yes. It attracted me, maybe because my father had one at home. He had played it in his youth, for fun, with friends. It was kept stored in boxes. I wasn’t really allowed to touch them when I was young. They said it made noise. But my curiosity had always been there.
PanM360: But you didn’t know how to play?
Valérie Lacombe: No! 10 days before entering college, I learned that I had to prepare for an audition! I thought they were going to teach me how to play! Eventually, I succeeded, and then I fell in love with the instrument and with jazz. I dropped anthropology, completed my college studies, and got into McGill.
PanM360: A beautiful and unusual journey! Was it intimidating for you to feel that you were starting on an instrument while most others had already mastered theirs for a longer time?
Valérie Lacombe: I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed, but the feeling I had was to reconnect with the world I knew, the world of music that I had known at École Des Cèdres. I couldn’t believe that music could be my life, that people studied it at school like I had done in elementary school, full-time. I wanted to work hard even if I started later.
I believed a lot in my potential and above all, I was so in love with music that I didn’t feel I had any other choice. I had the feeling that I had been looking for a long time to get involved in a project that resonated with me to this extent. I considered myself really lucky even though it was certainly not easy to prepare for an audition at McGill when I had only been playing for a year and a half.
PanM360: Who did you study with?
Valérie Lacombe: With Jim Doxas.
PanM360: Great musician. Very, very solid.
Valérie Lacombe: Yes, indeed! Then I also studied with André White, Kevin Dean, Dave Lang, Darryl Green. I have now completed my master’s degree.
PanM360: How did you become familiar with the jazz repertoire? Who were your first role models?
Valérie Lacombe: When I started at Vanier, I knew nothing about jazz. An example I often mention when I talk about my first year there is that I wasn’t sure if John Coltrane played the trumpet or the saxophone! Lol. Then someone I met made me a mixtape with their favourite drummers. A playlist that I listened to quite a bit. On that list, there was Soul Station by Hank Mobley. Then, a friend made me listen to Night Train by Oscar Peterson. With Elvin Jones on drums. There, I started copying what the drummers were doing. I was in my rehearsal room and I was trying to “play along.” I was listening to the album and paying attention to what the drummer was playing and trying to reproduce it. I did it a lot with Ed Dickman. Then with Jimmy Cobb. I feel that they are really the ones who taught me how to find a good feel on the cymbal.
I spent hours and hours and hours and hours on it. There is also Max Roach, whom I studied a lot. More for the language, in his case. He is a drummer who has spent a lot of time crafting a discourse to make all the parts of the drum kit speak.
The hi-hat, the bass drum, the snare, the toms. There is an extremely melodic language when he improvises. I spent a lot of time transcribing his solos.
PanM360: And finally, the album?
Valérie Lacombe: It’s my Master’s project. We have to record an hour of original music.
PanM360: And the musical universe is one without a piano. Why?
Valérie Lacombe: I would say that my main source of inspiration for composition is the one I associate with Elvin Jones’ band. I must also mention André White, who has an influence on the world he creates in his compositions, in this way.
PanM360: Do you feel as much like an accompanist as a composer, or has composing made you want to delve into it even more?
Valérie Lacombe: Mainly, I feel like a musician. I love playing, accompanying musicians who present their own original music because it’s personal. You enter their world. You discover other facets of their musical personality. Then, it was the same feeling I had with myself of sitting down and listening to the sounds I heard, and then creating pieces from that.
PanM360: The album has a common thread, an extra-musical inspiration…
Valérie Lacombe: Yes, I went to pick from an author named Clarice Lispector, in a short novel she wrote called Àgua Viva. More specifically, a quote in there, State of Garden and Shadow.
PanM360: What does it mean?
Valérie Lacombe: When I read this book, it was a significant period of transformation for me because I was about to finish my studies, and I had grown immensely as a musician, but also as a composer.
It’s a book I had read just before starting the composition process, and this quote had really struck me. She is an author who writes in a very vivid manner. Sometimes a sentence will make me think and then travel a lot, and then this sentence, State of Garden and Shadow, it makes me connect with the feeling of taking the time, of taking care of a garden. It takes patience, it takes a lot of work, but there is so much beauty that comes out of it.
It’s just an image that really resonated with what I was experiencing at McGill. From an aesthetic point of view, there is also what attracts me in the sounds I hear, the balance of darkness and beauty.
PanM360: And the three members who complete your quartet, they are all from McGill. Good connections?
Valérie Lacombe: Yes, very good. Musicians that I really like. Camille Thurman, Caoilainn Power, and Ira Coleman. Caoilainn, I’ve been playing with her for a long time. I already had a sextet in the years 2016-2017, and she was part of it. She plays the alto saxophone, and I love her way of playing. Camille Thurman and then Ira Coleman, musicians I admire. For me, it was the ideal band, even when I was writing before I even knew if they would agree to record with me, it was their sound that I imagined.
PanM360: How do you feel about having them with you on your first album?
Valérie Lacombe: It’s a great privilege. I really felt while recording that I was with professionals, and I was touched to know that they wanted to support me in this project. They really understood the aesthetic of the album, the kind of music I was referring to.
PanM360: I find that you do a lot with finesse. I find that you do a lot with finesse. You are capable of power, but there is never any bluster. And you like to draw fine lines, don’t you? Do the classical years, the violin, have an influence?
Valérie Lacombe: I think it indeed forged something very solid.
PanM360: The launch will take place on April 29, the eve of International Jazz Day.
Valérie Lacombe: Yes, I am very happy. Since 2015, we have been celebrating this day in Montreal (it had started a few years earlier elsewhere in the world). It’s a very beautiful occasion.
PanM360: What’s next?
Valérie Lacombe: A bit of a crazy project that will start on May 11 and run until June 5. I will present my project, State of Garden in Shadow, across Canada.
I’ve booked concerts all over Canada. Then, I hire local musicians. I will leave Montreal by car. I will drive to Vancouver.
I would also like to book a tour in Eastern Canada. Then, well, slowly, I’m thinking about the next album.
