Vocalist/pianist Champian Fulton and saxophonist/clarinetist Klas Lindquist are releasing their debut album as a duo, At Home, on 2 May via Turtle Bay Records. Links to the label’s and artists’ websites can be found at the end of this article.
Over the past year and change, Champian Fulton has gone through major changes.
A long-term romantic relationship ended. One of her closest friends, the alto saxophone legend and jazz elder Lou Donaldson, died at 98 – (link to her tribute below) . She relocated to Harlem, from Jersey City. She had major surgery which led to three weeks of gigs canceled. She began a romantic and creative relationship with Klas Lindquist – a Swede, born in Göteborg and based in Stockholm – a fellow jazz practitioner.
So it made sense that their first record together, At Home, would somewhat circle the wagons. Fulton thrives in the duo format: dig 2021’s Live from Lockdown, where she and her father, trumpeter/flugelhornist Stephen Fulton, channeled well-trodden standards to surprising, stirring results, and dig the 2024 release “Every Now and Then”, her second outing in the duo format with Canadian saxophonist Cory Weeds.
This carries over into At Home, where the couple imbues “The Very Thought of You,” “Tea for Two,” and the like with fresh energy, and the undeniable aura of new beginnings.
Read on for an interview with Fulton and Lindquist, conducted at a Jersey City diner on the cusp of spring.
Jersey City, March 2025. Photo by Morgan Enos
UK Jazz News: How’s it been since losing Lou?
Champian Fulton: I miss him a lot. I think about him every day. I’ve got a copy of his unpublished autobiography, so I’ve been reading it slowly. It was never edited or anything. It just sounds like him talking. Which is really pleasant, but that’s kind of why I’m stringing it along.
It needs a literary touch, I think, because Lou talked very plainly — so it reads very plainly.
UKJN: Klas, are you a Lou guy?
Klas Lindquist: I’ve turned into one through her. [Near the end of his life, he and I] talked about some tunes on my record which came out last year, called Handle with Care — tunes that are associated with the way he plays them.
UKJN: Such as?
KL: There’s a tune called “The Man with a Horn.” He released a record [in 1999, recorded in 1961 and 1963] called A Man With a Horn. I knew the tune from before, but when I heard Lou play it… I can listen to it so many times, because it’s a magic take. Also, “Cherokee” is his arrangement.
UKJN: Klas, which schools of the horn do you come from influence-wise?
KL: I mean, my first idol, when I was 12 years old, was Johnny Hodges. And then I heard Charlie Parker, then I couldn’t decide who I liked the most.
CF: Johnny Hodges and Charlie Parker were also Lou Donaldson’s two favorite saxophonists.
KL: I’d been playing traditional jazz on the alto, and then I picked up the clarinet, and it felt so natural. People say clarinet is such a difficult instrument, but it has so many good sides that take over — the range and personality of the instrument.
You really have three instruments in one. I would say its lower register is like that of a saxophone — even a tenor. The middle is more like a voice — kind of open. Then, you’ve got the flute register up there. The clarinet is a wonderful instrument.
CF: He plays totally differently on the clarinet than the alto saxophone. Different ideas, with a different personality.
UKJN: How’d you guys meet?
CF: We met in the summer of 2023. We were in Copenhagen, and I wasn’t feeling very well. It was kind of a rough summer for me, and I wasn’t in a good mood at all. The presenter at this festival was like, “We want you to have this Swedish alto player on your gig.” I was like, Great. Just what I need.
I sent this email to him, and he never replied to me. I was like, Oh, great. This is off to a good start. So, we got to Copenhagen; I wasn’t having such a great time. We went to the first gig, and I was a little annoyed because he never replied to my email, but he was nice.
We were getting ready to go on, talking about tunes — and then he said, “Do you think I can play a clarinet feature?” I was like, Oh, great. This guy doesn’t reply to my emails, and now he wants to play the clarinet.
I asked what he wanted to play, and he said “Embraceable You,” which is always my father’s feature on flugelhorn. We started playing the gig, and I was thinking, Oh, wow. He sounds really good on the saxophone. This is fun. I’m having a good time.
Then it came time for the clarinet feature. It’s a hard instrument to sound good on, and it can sound, shall we say, corny. And it was so beautiful; he could really play the clarinet. I really dug his music.
UKJN: Then what happened?
CF: We had five or six gigs together for that tour, all in Denmark. I really wanted to play with him more, and let other people hear his music. That week, I told him, “Let’s make a record.”
KL: Then, the last night of the tour, she said, “I sent you this email. You never replied.” [After a back-and-forth], she looked in her draft folder; it was still in her drafts. Never sent.
CF: So, we started working together more, and I wanted to record; I just didn’t have a big plan. I had moved, and my life was in total upheaval. I wasn’t really searching for an opportunity, because I had so much else going on.
I met [producer and Turtle Bay Records founder] Scott Asen through [saxophonist and clarinetist] Ricky Alexander. I went to a party at his house, and at the end of the night, he was like, “Would you play for me?”
Klas was in town, and I said, “Yeah, but I have this friend in town who plays really great. Maybe he should come and play.” Scott was like, “Yeah, cool.”
KL: I was supposed to join the party after. She said, “Don’t bring the horn. It’s not that kind of vibe.” And as I headed there, it shifted to, “No, bring your horn.” I had to go back and get it.
CF: We played, and Scott loved it. He said, “I want to record this,” but it was a party, and it was, like, two in the morning. A couple of days later, Scott emailed me, reminding me that we should record that music.
We were spending a lot of time together, going back and forth: I was going to Sweden, he was coming here. We’re obsessed with music and playing — working on music every day.
UKJN: Champian, just the other day, you recorded with the great bassist Buster Williams. What was that like?
CF: I met Buster when I was 15 years old, on the Jazz Cruise. He is actually my favorite bass player. We played together once, 10 years ago, when I hired him for a gig at Dizzy’s. He’s my hero.
But, I made this record for Jazz at the Ballroom [via their Executive Director] Suzanne Waldowski, and she said she had a bass player already hired, but he had to back out because he had to go on tour.
I was in California, having a coffee, going to my gig — and I was thinking, Gosh, what would be my wishlist of bass players. I thought, Man, Buster — that’s my wishlist.
I called him and asked, and he said yes. We got into the studio, and I was so nervous — because he can be so serious, and he’s so great. Like, What if I suck, and disappoint him? But he was so nice, funny, and fun to work with. Easy, contributing ideas — and learning, also.
When he first walked in, we were sitting at a little table, and he was decompressing. I asked him if he remembered when he played the Jazz Standard with Cedar Walton and Jimmy Cobb on my 18th birthday.
He was on the piano, and I was sitting next to him, and I said, “Cedar, do you think I can sit in?” He smiled and looked at me funny, and said, “I’ll think about it.” And he never let me; I didn’t sit in.
But later, when he passed away, his wife told me at the funeral: “I don’t think you know what happened that weekend. You made Cedar so happy.” Because when he was 18 and in the service, he went to see Duke Ellington, and he went up to him and asked if he could sit in with the band.
And Duke Ellington was sitting at the piano, I guess, just like Cedar was. And Duke looked at him and said, “I’ll think about it.” So, Cedar went home and said, “Tonight, I got to be Duke Ellington to this little girl.”
At Home is released on Turtle Bay Records on 2 May 2025. The first single from the album is released this Friday 21 March.
