Sophie Millman parks her bulging suitcase in the closet of her Toronto home.
There’s no point in unpacking. She’ll just be getting on another plane a day or two later. That’s life on the road for Canada’s most celebrated young jazz singer.
Her next tour includes a stop at the Berkeley jazz club Yoshi’s, where she will make her Bay Area concert debut Aug. 28. With her latest CD, “Make Someone Happy,” just released, Millman is on the hunt for new fans.
It’s hardly difficult for the 24-year-old singer. Not only does she have the good looks and chops of a pro, not only is she a worthy successor to jazz greats like Sarah Vaughan, but Millman also connects with all kinds of audiences. It’s easy when you claim multiple heritages — Jewish, Russian, Israeli and Canadian — and speak four languages fluently.
Add in the fact that she’s a semester or two away from a business degree, and one might conclude Millman is an over-achieving multitasker. She is. While admitting to “crying in the corner” if she gets anything less than A-plus in any endeavor, there’s one aspect of her life that doesn’t tax her too much: singing.
“I don’t think a lot about what I sing,” she says. “I just sing it. I gravitate to very emotional material. I have that dark Russian streak going on in the way I sound. I think I sound like a Russian Jew.”
Considering she spent the first seven years of her life in the Ural Mountains town of Ufa — a locale where many Soviet Jews banished by Stalin took up residence — that smoky color in her voice makes sense.
While she sounds at home singing American classics like “Fever” and “People Will Say We’re In Love,” Millman is truly multi-cultural. She grew up in Russia steeped in gospel, jazz and soul, thanks to her father’s knack for obtaining American recordings on the black market.
“My dad jumped through hoops to put that collection together,” says Millman. “It wasn’t available in stores. Polish and Russian jazz was allowed, but North American jazz was not as accepted.”
As for leading a Jewish life, it wasn’t easy in the former Soviet Union. After the family attended a clandestine Purim party one year, Millman’s father found himself summoned to the local KGB office the next day.
“My parents’ understanding of Judaism was family and community more than religion,” she says. “Jewish parents are survivors. For some it was important to keep the Jewish religion, but for most it was more important to survive.”
The family left for Israel in 1990, settling in Haifa, where Millman continued absorbing as much music as possible. But just as she finally felt at home in Israel, security concerns led her parents to move again, this time to Toronto.
She remembers feeling miserable those first years in Canada, having to learn another language and culture. What remained constant was her love of music, especially jazz. When she launched a singing career at age 19, she thought she could approximate the sound of her heroes.
“I listened to Carmen MacRae and Mahalia Jackson when they were at the top of their game,” she says, “and I measured myself against them. Now I cut myself some slack because I know I have a lot of growing to do.”
Finding an authentic voice is the mission of any singer, and Millman is well on the way. Consider her heart-rending performance of Hannah Senesh’s “Eli, Eli,” which closes the CD. After a dozen tracks of first-rate upbeat jazz, the song’s simplicity and Hebrew lyrics take the listener by surprise, and the Jewish listener by the throat.
All Israeli kids know the tune, but Millman decided to include it in her current repertoire after a visit to Israel last summer. The day she left, Hezbollah rockets began landing on her hometown of Haifa.
Recalls Millman, “I said ‘Enough! I need to connect to people as an Israeli singer.’ It’s not very sexy to be Israeli these days, but I got sick of that. What about the other aspects: the culture, the emotion, the real desire for peace?”
While jazz may lag behind rock and rap in sales, the art form continues to thrive, especially when young performers like Millman get into the game. Will she make it big? No one can say, but she’s certainly nailed down the right attitude for success.
“I don’t like boring records,” she says. “I wanted to make an eclectic record that takes people through a full range of emotions. I wanted to choose a repertoire that reflected my life.”