Interview with Dr. Eliza Pope

Screen Shot 2021-05-19 at 4.38.33 PM.png — Eliza Pope is currently a first year Pediatrics resident in Toronto, as well as a big-time foodie, jazz singer and songwriter, and all-around music lover. She released her first album entitled “Call Me a Fool” in 2015 and a single “Canvas” in 2019. She’s one of those people who is either listening to, talking about, or playing music at any given moment of the day, and she is so proud to be from a city with such a rich musical tapestry. She’s also very grateful that working with kids means that breaking into song mid-day is strongly encouraged, and is a special kind of medicine for both her and her patients.

Q: Tell us about yourself.

I'm originally from Toronto. I grew up here, and I was lucky enough to come back here for medical school. Now, I'm a pediatrics resident and have just started my first year at SickKids. I’d like to think of myself as someone who loves the arts, and I think that has really engrained itself into who I've become. I'm a musician mostly, but I dabble in a few other arts things, too. When I think about who I am and how I look at life, I always come back to the role that the arts have played in my life. It's nice to be able to talk about that side of my life.

Q: Can you tell us about your musical journey? How or why did you start singing, and where are you at now in your singing career?

I started singing in Grade eight. A family friend who was an opera singer back in Romania kindly offered to give me opera lessons, probably after hearing an over-enthusiastic rendition of some pop song at our family dinners. Me, being 13 and not knowing anything about opera, said, “Sure, this is great!” While in the end [opera] music, as beautiful as it is, wasn't really my cup of tea, it got me started in the direction that led me here.

For my whole life, I have loved jazz music; it was always on at home. There was something about jazz I found really compelling, so I naturally transitioned to taking jazz vocal lessons. Jazz is one of those things that the more you get into, the more invested in it you become. Eventually, I was able to push myself to explore different styles of jazz and start performing on my own. I started gigging at the end of high school. In undergrad, I was lucky enough to put out an album [Call Me a Fool]. More gigs followed, and I put out another single [Canvas] in medical school. And of course, it's hard to balance all of that with curricular activities. I think there are many talented people in medicine who have other passions and can relate to the difficulty of finding balance. But I think those “pockets of joy” as I call them, when I had time to do music and do a gig while in medical school, were really wonderful.

It's hard to find balance, but when there is, it makes both sides that much more enjoyable. It gives you more energy to go back refreshed.

So that's where I'm at today. My plans for the future are to record another album—hopefully only originals this time. I'm working on that as best as I can.

And in the meantime, music is my therapy. My parents always joke that ever since I was a kid, whenever they noticed that something was wrong, or when I needed time for myself, they knew to set up the piano and let my emotions come out—and they did. I would feel amazing.

I think [what drew me to singing] was that way to connect with such raw emotions when you didn't necessarily have the words in your day-to-day life to do so. It's a beautiful thing. I was talking to someone recently, and they said, “I think music was the first language before any of us could speak.” I thought that was so true. I think in many ways, [music] is the universal language still, though it’s cheesy to say. You don't even need a vocalist to convey an emotion, which is pretty incredible. I think that's what keeps me coming back to it.

Q: Can you also tell us about your experiences in songwriting?

I think “frustration” is the first word that comes to mind. That's a little jaded of me to say, but it’s one of those processes that can be challenging until inspiration strikes—then it feels like the most natural thing in the world. It's easy to romanticize the process and say that it's really simple, but, often, it's hard to capture the feeling that you're feeling. That being said, I think it is very much a cathartic process. Even with the frustrations, the ability to be able to capture where you were in that place in your life, or how you were feeling, or what was happening around you, and then to be able to share that with people in a way that they can relate to is a very special process. [Another thing] is to be able to look back on your songs…. I now have these memories from this album of “Oh yeah, that's where I was in that place,” or “That's what I was thinking of when I was writing that.”

It is like a scrapbook of where you were in your life, but set to music. And again, it pulls you back to that place really quickly. That's the emotional power of music; I think you can recreate exactly where you were in that moment. It's interesting to look back and see that some things still apply. I think some things are new, but, for me, being able to write something that's honest and that other people can relate to is a really beautiful thing. It's incredible.

One of the best feelings at my shows is when I sing my originals, and I can see that it means something to people. It’s a very cool feeling.

Q: What inspires you to write songs?

Most of the originals on my album are about self-discovery and exploration. One of my favourite songs that I've written is a song called Try. It's all about wondering whether you can put yourself into something, whether you can jump in with both feet, and that feeling of excitement when things work out. I think this feeling of hesitation is universal, so a lot of the songs that I write are drawn from that: my own personal internal dialogue. As I write songs for this “possible” album (I cautiously call it a “possible” album), I'm trying to draw from some of the experiences of other people in my life. There's only so much that a kid who's gone straight to residency can say about life!

One of the reasons I feel really lucky to be in the field [of medicine] is that you learn so much about life. The people that you meet in this role completely broaden your horizons. When I think of songwriting and being able to tell a story, we see stories all the time, we hear them firsthand, we hear them in more detail than most people in those individuals’ lives hear them. That’s not to say that I broadcast my patients’ stories, but I think their messages are universal and really compelling. When I meet a person and they make me stop and think or they make me reconsider the way I'm seeing things, I just jot down a few notes. That's led to some really interesting songs in the works.

Q: You have released an album, Call Me a Fool. Can you tell us what the creative process of producing an album was like? What did you enjoy most about the experience? What did you enjoy least? What lessons did you take away from the experience?

Like most things in life, I didn't know much about recording an album before I did it; I think it's a lot of learning on the fly. I had the idea of doing an album, but I needed a lot of encouragement from other musicians that I was working with. Once I decided that I was going to do it, the first step was song selection. There are a couple of songs that I included in the album that I just enjoy singing. Some have emotional ties to them, like Here Comes the Sun, which brings me back to my childhood. Then, I included some of my originals that I felt ready to share.

I was very fortunate to know a really talented pianist and arranger in Toronto, Mark Kieswetter, who is a lovely human being as a whole. He took me under his wing and we worked together on arranging the different songs. He helped me elevate my bedroom recordings to what an arrangement would look like for a professional set of musicians. Once we had gotten all that done, he was able to connect me with a recording engineer (John “Beetle” Bailey), who, unfortunately, is no longer in Toronto, but he's one of the best in the country. Then, I got some musicians that I had worked with on previous gigs. There were some who I was meeting for the first time (Band: Ross Macintyre, Eric St-Laurent, Max Roach). We basically all met at John’s recording studio in August 2014. For a lot of the guys, as I mentioned, it was the first time I was meeting them; they had never heard my music.

Then, this crazy, unbelievable creative process happened. First, I talked them through all the songs. I told them the feel I was going for. Mark had prepared charts—jazz works with lead sheets, so you just have a basic melody and a chord marker—and for a lot of them, it was then a process of creating on the fly together.

It was unbelievable to hear a bare bones song that I thought up in my bedroom on the piano turn into a whole recording with professional musicians; it was s the most exhilarating feeling I can describe.

We spent about a day with the band laying down what we call “bed tracks”, or instrumental tracks. I then came back to the studio for a few days to do my vocals over again, the first day to get everything on paper recorded, then coming back to tweak things and work on the mix.

John (recording engineer) also took me under his wing and said, “Okay, you want to be part of this? Let me show you how it works.” He showed me how we edit, how we play with levels and all these compressors and EQ and all the technical aspects of making a mix. It's a whole other world, and I have so much respect for people who do that. It's a constant process of reworking. The thing that was so humbling for me was just seeing the amount of talent that these musicians and technicians have. I feel really, really lucky to have gotten to work with them. To be honest, I still can’t believe that as the newbie I got to work with some of the best in the city.

As a sidenote, I think another thing that I learned from recording an album is the harsh reality of the music business and the impact of streaming on artists. If you have a musician that you support, I really encourage you to support them by buying their album, if possible, from a direct source (e.g., website). If you’re able to do more than stream it on [a streaming service], it makes a big difference, because it's really, really hard to make a living as a recording musician these days. I hadn’t realized that before being in the seat of the individual trying to market their music. Since recording the album, I always try to invest in the artists that I really love.

Q: How does studio recording compare to live performance? Do you have a preference?

I think that's a great question. Studio recording is cool; there's a lot of novelty to it. You get to be in this new, high-tech space. You’re surrounded by this incredible equipment, and it's dead quiet when you walk into the sound booth, which is an eerily exciting feeling. Again, seeing your songs come to life is really exciting, but, for me, I will always say the most comfortable and the most “myself” that I feel is when I'm onstage in front of people.

I think the beauty of music comes out when you can see people's reactions, when you can play off the crowd, when you can get people so invested that you can hear a fork drop onto a plate. That feeling is just so powerful because you're all there together. It's not supposed to be me performing for you; it's supposed to be this back-and-forth, this dialogue.

When a really upbeat song comes on, and people start dancing or shouting and clapping, it becomes a meaningful experience for everyone. I like to do a little bit of sing-along with the crowd, too. It may be cheesy, but I think it's really nice to get everyone involved. People come to hear music, to feel something, to hear a story. For me, that works much better when you are there together and you can play off each other. All this to say, there's really no feeling like being on stage. You're so vulnerable; you are so exposed to everything, but, at the same time, you let it be that way, you embrace it in some ways. I think that was really scary for me at the beginning, but once you let yourself settle into that, you feel a real sense of freedom in the vulnerability.

Q: How did you develop your style as a jazz singer? What draws you to jazz singing in particular?

I think the most unique thing about jazz is improv. For people who aren't totally familiar with that, or who have never heard about improv, it's basically making things up on the spot. Jazz is one of those genres that really embraces that process more than any other genre. The reason that's so wonderful is, one, it's an extra opportunity for creativity, but I think there are a lot of lessons that you can learn from a genre that so freely embraces change and coming up with things on the spot.

In my life, as is the case with most people in medicine, I have a tendency to lean towards predictability and structure. It's really scary to step outside of that, in life and in music; to all of a sudden be put on stage with no notes in front of you and just rain free. But it can also be incredibly liberating. Being in that setting on stage, it’s taught me a lot about being okay in a state of uncertainty, where you don't necessarily have things scripted and your next move may very well be a mistake.

To put it differently, there's this philosophy of just rolling with it in jazz. If you play a wrong note, you don't stop. You just find a way to make it work; you turn that into a lick of some sort, or you turn it into a new melodic phrase, or you change the chords underneath. You evolve with the mistakes, and I think, in a lot of ways, that's a very healthy philosophy to have in life, too.

In a career like medicine, where we come down on ourselves in such a powerful way with any performance short of perfection, I try to remind myself of this same process. Of learning from mistakes, but also learning to recognize that even when things don’t play out the way you expect, sometimes you can find the good in that process too.

So that's one of the big things, the improv. I also will say that because it's dynamic, and because it's always evolving, you also have to rely a lot on the people around you. There's so much trust when you're on stage because if someone changes something, you’ve all got to change. One thing people don't realize is that you don't come to gigs having rehearsed; sometimes you show up to a gig and you shake hands for the first time and say, “Okay, let's do this thing.” They have no idea what the songs are, and you haven't talked about anything. You just do it, and there's this magic way where it just happens. It works out. On stage, you're talking to each other, you're looking at each other and you're pointing. Some of that is also the theatrics of just performing, but it's also our way of talking to each other on the fly as it's happening, so I find that very exciting. I think, again, that comes with communities, that feeling that you're really there to perform together. It's not one person shining while the rest are in the dust; it's a team effort. You're all going through the song together and seeing where it takes you.

Q: Do you have song recommendations or places to listen to jazz?

We’re very lucky here in Toronto. To name a few, The Rex [Hotel Jazz & Blues Club] is one of the institutions in the city. They do a lot of instrumental music and have some really incredible core artists from Toronto that go through there. They also bring in excellent traveling bands that come through. If you want something a little bit more relaxed, maybe an introduction to jazz, it's a great place to go and sit at a table with friends and get a little bit of exposure. Moving up the ladder, if you want something cool and trendy, in Kensington Market there's the Poetry Jazz Cafe. They do a lot of jazz, soul, and R&B fusion, so if you're into any of those things, it's a really, really cool spot. It’s definitely the kind of place to impress someone, maybe someone who you're hoping to get into jazz or who you want to just show a cool spot in the city. Then, probably on the fancier end, when you have the intent to enjoy a night out and see jazz, I love the Jazz Bistro on Victoria Street. Personally, it’s probably one of my favourite places to perform. I think one of the amazing things about it is that people come there to hear jazz; it's quiet when the music’s going, and they work hard to curate a great schedule; a lot of musicians they bring in are incredible international presences. It's really dedicated to jazz, so if you're ready for a nice dinner and great music, , then it's a really lovely spot. Those are probably my three picks, but there are lots more, and more importantly, we have some of the best jazz musicians in the world, right here in our backyard.