Meet Nicole Zuraitis: A Trailblazer in Grammy History

You know, I'm still not used to hearing that. I actually don't even realize that it happened. I still am in complete disbelief. I don't think about it. It's not like I wake up in the morning and go, "I won a Grammy." It takes an interview for someone to be like, How does it feel that you won that? I'm like, holy crap. It's really great, but that's also because when you’re a musician, you're just constantly feeling that imposter syndrome, and it's a hard enough business. So, it's not like you win a Grammy® and then everything's easy... My musical background is that I always thought good music was good music. I wasn't really ever drawn to any particular genre. I was made fun of at soccer camp for listening to Blood, Sweat and Tears and Pat Benatar, when everyone else was listening to like, Biggie. But I also loved Biggie. It just made sense for me to go to jazz because jazz is such a deeply intellectual art form rooted in Black American Music. And all my favorite types of music are based in Black American Music.

I always loved the rhythm and blues. I had a teacher when I was at Litchfield Jazz Camp; they basically said I'll be the teaching assistant at the jazz camp in exchange for a scholarship because everything was so expensive. I started getting into jazz, and I had a teacher, Eli Yemin, who was the first person to introduce me to the Blues. And he was like, Nicole, you can't sing jazz unless you understand the blues. And you can't sing the blues unless you understand where the blues came from. And that was a huge lesson for me as a young kid from Connecticut, you know?

I didn't come from a musical family, so my decision to do music was always purely my own. I couldn't imagine doing anything else, even though, from a young age, I wasn't like revered. It's not like I was a child prodigy. If anything, I always say that I had a big voice that nobody knew what to do with, and I wasn't stereotypically pretty. So if I wanted to do musical theater, I would be cast as like the funny friend. And if I wanted to do pop music, my voice didn't function like that. But jazz was the perfect intermediary genre, which was, which my voice just kind of naturally flourished. I was transcribing Ella Fitzgerald constantly and learning her inflections and her entire songbook. And I was playing the trombone! I did everything by ear. I would be in the trombone section, unable to read the music, and I would just hear the part that wasn't there. And that's how I sang as well. I always just kind of like understood harmony innately. I had a really hard time reading rhythm, and I still do to this day. Playing the trombone and singing opera are two of the most bizarre choices you can make, and there I was, an awkward, big-voiced, big-bold teenager playing the trombone and singing opera and jazz like nothing. It’s crazy.

That's really beautiful. I made this documentary before the nominations came out because I was feeling so depressed. It opens with the line, “if a tree falls on the forest and nobody hears did it, does it exist?” I had lived my life for two years. After I made the record with Christian [McBride] first, I tried to get it with a label. Nobody wanted it. And then the one label that did want it dropped me at the last second. I had issues trying to remain loyal with different people that I had worked with who wouldn't work with other people. Then I still had to book my own tours, manage my own thing, write the music, advance, do graphic design, think about the branding, come up with a fundraising, everything … I was like, if the tree falls, like all my other records, all six of them, it's like nobody heard them. Why? Because I didn't have any money to put them into publicity. There’s no A&R (artists and repertoire) scouts anymore… and unless you’re a social media star; nobody's looking around going, wow, that person's a good songwriter. They're not trying to develop artists anymore. They're just looking for something—someone that's already cooked. Could you imagine if TV shows were only launched to stardom based on Instagram reels? Music is the only thing that can launch people's stardom. No one is watching someone's comedy reels and then giving them a Netflix special. You know what I'm saying? It’s crazy.

Well, I had tried for the first time in my life manifesting. I was always too afraid to have goals. Having goals means that you are putting what you want out there and you can be rejected, or you can fail. Right. It's just easier sometimes to just pay the bills, do the thing. But when you put yourself out there, there's that constant threat of failure. I had been just thinking to myself, I don't know any other way besides what I've been doing, which is not sustainable. I'm exhausted. I'm not making a sustainable living, because every time I go on tour, I'm breaking even, maybe. I am not making any money from the music that I've made. I told myself, I have to change something. I started manifesting. I was like, well, what's the one thing I know is coming up that has the potential to change lives? I would just like to manifest a nomination. I had like pictured exactly where my computer was going to be. I had just been picturing my name come across the screen. And so that morning, you know, I was folding laundry and just keeping busy. So I went, I put my laptop exactly where it was supposed to be, where I was picturing it. I sat with Dan [Pugach, her husband], and we just watched the names come across. And it was famous person, even more famous person, then extremely famous person, super famous person... Then, I was the last one. I was like, there's no way it's me. And then it was me, and I burst into tears. I was just, I was hysterical. And I turned to my husband, and I said, I'm so sorry. I have been such a nightmare over the last two years, but it just felt like I didn't have anything left in me if something didn't change for the better.

I have studied and loved and cherished and really lived within the traditions of jazz, but I also love songwriters and storytelling and, and rhythm and blues. So my record and the music that I write has always kind of sat strangely on the fence. But, for “How Love Begins”, I was trying to write music that I could imagine sitting next to one of my heroes on a playlist. As opposed to all the other music I'd ever written was, where I was playing at a 55 Bar [NYC] once a month and it was more like prog-rock meets jazz. But then for “How Love Begins”, I was like, well, I got Christian McBride, my buddy, to be like, let's freaking do this, Nicole. So what would Christian McBride sound good playing? Literally anything (laughs). I have about 40 songs that no one ever heard. One of them was a ballad, and I turned that ballad into “Burn.”

Yeah, exactly. I mean, his voice is iconic. So I was like, I don't care. Whatever happens with this record. The fact that my friend is this iconic legend and he took time to make music with me. It’s just really special.

I think one of the questions I get asked most by artists who are either up and coming or been at it a long time is, “Nicole, how, do you book the shows?” "How do you find the will to keep going if no one even wants to give you a chance?" And I have a really hard time answering that, but the one thing I do know is that I can't see myself doing anything else. If you know that you were put on this earth to create, then you have to be equally happy creating, whether you're a famous person or whether you're doing it once a month at the VFW or karaoke. You can still  call yourself an artist and a musician- you earned that right by having the creative spark in your bones. You could just call yourself an artist and a musician. Another thing I always get is people will come to me after a show and I'll see the spark in their eye, and I'll be like, you're a musician. They'll say, no, no, no. I work in finance now. You know? And I, and then as, as we talk more, they'll be like, well, you know, but, but my band does play twice a week. I'm like, so you're a musician. Why is there a qualifier? Stop qualifying the thing that you love. It's not, you’re famous or you're not a musician. If you are but you have a different job and you're still doing music, you're still a musician. People have all this guilt because the industry is incredibly difficult. We still play weddings and background gigs. Both of us [Zuraitis and her husband Pugach] have Grammy® nominations and the Grammy®, but I finally have money coming in from the, the playlists and the tours, etc. But is it like life changing? No (laughs). Do I need benefactors? Yes.

We were shocked and delighted. We felt like people are really listening with their ears these days and not with their eyes. I feel like there’s a big change on the guards in the music industry in general.  Dan and I couldn't swing a full publicity campaign for his album after my Grammy win last year; they came out within months of each other. So we decided to fundraise for another session in studio and do the publicity ourselves.  There’s a lot of power that independent artists can harness for themselves these days with social media and releasing music, and the beauty of the Recording Academy is that voters listen to the recording at hand; it doesn’t matter how many followers you have or streams. It’s about the music. "Bianca Reimagined" is a genius project, featuring a full 18-piece big band and a heartfelt composition. We donate a portion of the proceeds to dog rescues we've been collaborating with for the past 14 years. No matter what, what matters is how we give back through music. There’s always a greater picture and purpose with the arts.