Meredith d'Ambrosio: 'Midnight Mood'

March 20, 2025

Meredith d'Ambrosio: 'Midnight Mood'

Meredith d'Ambrosio just released Midnight Mood (Sunnyside), her 18th studio album. She's accompanied by Frédéric Loiseau on guitar and Paul McWilliams on piano. Recording since 1978, Meredith has a singing style that is all her own. Her delivery is breezy and intimate and swinging, with a dash of Bill Evans intensity. Today is her birthday, and at 84, her voice is still knowing, distinct and joyously hip.

Meredith is one of the most complete and sensitive jazz artists I know. She's an accomplished singer, pianist, composer, painter, calligrapher and inventor of the eggshell mosaic. Her eggshell mosaic discovery was actually a happy accident. As Meredith told Jazz Improv in 2002, "I discovered the eggshell mosaic after wiping the kitchen counter. Some eggshells were swished into my porcelain sink and sounded like glass. A lightbulb went off in my head. I completed 45 eggshell mosaics from 1958 to 1977." [Photo above of Meredith d'Ambrosio]

How are they assembled? Here's what she told me in 2016: "On a thick wooden board, I make a sketch. After tearing the membrane from white eggshells, I paint the shells, crack them into small tessera [tiles], apply medium-rough mosaic cement in small areas to the board, and one by one, place each small painted eggshell onto the cement using a tweezer. Polyurethane is painted on the back to prevent warpage. The result is an image composed of painted eggshells." [Cover image above that features Meredith's eggshell mosaic]

All of Meredith's albums—except for her second one, Another Time (1981)—featured her paintings or mosaics on the cover. She has always selected superb songs and sidemen for her recordings ( and married one in 1988—pianist Eddie Higgins). In our many emails and phone calls, Meredith has always been transparent and emotionally honest on all subjects. She also is a faithful JazzWax reader and fan, which gives me great pleasure.

She reminds me of autumn in Boston, where I spent the 1970s in college. A New Englander, she was there at the same time I was, though we never met and I never saw her perform, unfortunately. Hence, I didn't discover her LPs until the mid-1980s. But when I heard her voice, I was immediately taken. Who knew that decades later we'd connect.

On Midnight Mood, Meredith's voice is limber and yearning, delivering songs effortlessly with her trademark girlish curiosity and wonderment in the upper register and maternal eloquence in the lower. Her vocals are about feeling, and her voice never comes across as mannered or an attempt to sound one way or another. Instead, they're pure personal expressions, like landscapes or the wind. The beauty of her voice is its all-natural sound and distinct jazz sensibility.

The tracks: