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Christie Dashiell at The Mansion at Strathmore in Rockville, Md. Jared Soares for NPR hide caption
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Jared Soares for NPR
In 1899, a wealthy couple in Washington, D.C. acquired a parcel of land in suburban Maryland, north of the city, to build a summer home — a nine-bedroom mansion atop a hill.
It was the next occupants who added the music room and its pipe organ. It has since functioned as a convent, a center for Filipino operations during World War II and a headquarters for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. It's now part of a public performing arts campus called Strathmore — complete with a nearby concert hall seating nearly 2,000 people — that has developed around that first building.
Jazz vocalist Christie Dashiell says that in the Mansion at Strathmore, at the 2016 release concert for her first album in the 100-seat music room, was the first place she felt like an artist.
"I think when I walked in the room and there were people in the room clapping for me and cheering for me and smiling at me — when I was singing, I knew, 'Oh, this is for real,' " she says. "Like, I'm doing the artist thing for real."
She had first come here for the Strathmore's artist-in-residence program, which every year selects six musicians between 16 and 32 years old, across discipline, for a 10-month series of group classes, performances, public lectures and, in general, the early-career practical education one doesn't get from music conservatory.
"I left college and grad school having so much music," she says. "I had written so much music and I had practiced so much music. But I didn't know what an artist and that life looked like."
Dashiell says that she learned stagecraft and stage presence at Strathmore; how to develop a web presence; how to do taxes as a freelance performer; how to finance and set up a tour. And of course, she worked with her fellow resident artists to write songs, craft arrangements and put on shows.
It's where she says she began to find not her vocal talents, but the unique sonic signature that defines and distinguishes a jazz artist: her sound.
"I knew what I had to say was special, but I remember feeling like I'm trying to find it," Dashiell says. "And I think at the time the [music] room was probably overwhelming for me. It probably felt like, 'Wow, my voice is making so much sound. How do I hone that sound a little more? How do I contain that sound a little bit?' "
Dashiell gave several concerts during her residency. She came back after she had created her first album. And she made it a point to play a larger Strathmore venue when she launched her sophomore album, Journey in Black.
That recording has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. It is her first Grammy nod.
"It feels good to be recognized in this way by your peers and by people that really — their art means something," she says. "I mean, like, these folks that voted — all of them mean something to me. Many of them had made music that inspired the music that I make. So it feels good."
In the dark, wood-paneled music room and the nearby dark, wood-paneled library room — where artists in residence take their seminar-style classes — Dashiell tells our All Things Considered team about her story. And about her musical family: her father Carroll Dashiell, a bassist, now leads the music department at Howard University; her brother C.V. Dashiell has long been her drummer.
Dashiell plays the piano at The Mansion at Strathmore. Jared Soares for NPR hide caption
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Jared Soares for NPR
"My parents always said, 'We're never going to tell you what to do,' " she says. "But the second you gravitated toward music and music-making, they were like, 'All right, you need to practice.' "
She tells of coming to D.C. to study at Howard University; of going to New York City for her graduate degree at Manhattan School of Music; of realizing that she would prefer to be, and could still make for herself a performing arts career, in the D.C. metro area.
In fact, the core band on this recording are also D.C.-area standouts: Allyn Johnson on piano, Romeir Mendez on bass, and her brother C.V. on drums.
"When you're studying jazz music, or at least when I was studying it … the thing was, you got to be in New York if you want to be a real-deal jazz musician," Dashiell says. "And that's partly why I went to the Manhattan School of Music for grad school, because I was like, I really want to study where the greats lived and where the music kind of emerged."
"It took a long time for me to kind of find my way, but I realized, like, I don't have to be in New York to make really impactful music, and I don't necessarily have to work with people that live in New York for it to impact folks, too."
Back in the D.C. metro area, she's herself become a teacher — with adjunct positions at the University of the District of Columbia and at her alma mater Howard University. The latter position saw her father become her coworker — and then, when he became chair of the music department at Howard, her boss. While she resisted that at first, she's coming to see the upside of that arrangement.
"I get to go to my dad's office and have lunch every day, and we get to talk about music and educating and how to help students find their voice like my teachers helped me," she says. "So I'm learning to lean in a little bit more to that."
The shift from Howard, a historically Black university, to graduate studies in Manhattan that she described as "not diverse at all" — in faculty and student body — also brought her some culture shock. And she says: "The way the music was made was not the way the music was being taught when I was there."
She proffers some thoughts on the structural issues behind that disparity — the "insane" cost of conservatory that still constitutes most of her student debt, and the lack of support and representation in K-12 music education for Black students. She understands that these student bodies have changed somewhat since her time in the early 2010s, but it still influences her outlook on making music today.
"In terms of who I want to make the music for, I want to make it for everyone," she says. "I see a lot of non-Black people at my concerts, which is great. But I want Black people to know that this is a space that I want us to take ownership in, especially in the audiences. I would love to sing a song like 'Brother, Sister' [the final song on Journey in Black] for a Brother or Sister."
"Ancestral Folk Song," the first song on Journey in Black, was inspired by the losses of her grandmother and her husband's grandmother. It turned into "a bigger thing."
"I wanted to start with … a call to my ancestors, a call to tell them I love them, I thank them, I appreciate them," Dashiell says. "They're in me. And they're a part of what this journey has been and continues to be."
The next two songs are titled "Grief" — about a character "struggling with the truth of what's been deep inside so long" — and "How It Ends" — about a friendship that has fallen apart. But others are about joy and love — and Dashiell says that in calling her record Journey in Black, she was conscious not to make all the songs about "the blues."
Dashiell says she welcomes the Grammy nomination, but the award itself was never the design. Jared Soares for NPR hide caption
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Jared Soares for NPR
"The human themes of love, loss, grief, joy, friendship — all of us can relate to that — Black, white, brown, whatever," she says. "And so I wanted to really paint a picture of the humanity of blackness, the expansiveness of the Black experience. It's not just one thing."
At several points on the record, like on the up-tempo, wordless modal swinger "Influence," Dashiell shows off her vocal improvisation chops — i.e. her scat singing. It's a classic technique she's long studied.
"I just felt like it was such a powerful way to express," she says. "Sometimes it sits in spaces where words can't always fit. So I did want to master that craft. And I know it's not ever mastered until probably the day I die."
But gospel organ and electric R&B grooves also show up in her arrangements. On "Invitation," the only jazz standard on an album which is mostly comprised of original songs, the intro and outro are a vamp borrowed from a hip-hop track often referenced by modern jazz musicians — "Fall In Love" by Slum Village, a beat created by the influential producer J Dilla.
And "Always Stay" is comprised only of her voice, which she layers in multi-tracked harmony in place of a band.
"I don't know what happened," she says. "I think I wanted [my band] to play it and I told them, 'Hey, don't come to the studio yet.' … And I was like, 'Oh, this is it. This is me. This is my song.'"
Journey in Black came out in late 2023, making it eligible for a 2025 Grammy. Dashiell says she anticipated that her record might be recognized with a nomination — she rushed home from a late-night gig in Philadelphia the next morning to be with her husband and dog for the announcement — and has come to recognize the credential it confers in the way crowds now respond to her.
But the award itself was never the design.
"Very few artists are making music with the purpose of being nominated for a Grammy," she says. "That's definitely not where I was coming from when I was making this music. I just wanted to make music that was honest and true and authentic and vulnerable in a way. And I knew it was special. I did know that."
Ailsa Chang and Gabriel Sanchez contributed to this story.
