Fleurine is a Dutch-born, internationally renowned jazz vocalist. Placing her own unconventional spin on pop, jazz and Brazilian repertoire, she is also a well-respected composer and lyricist, having written lyrics to compositions by Thelonious Monk, Kenny Dorham, Ray Bryant, Curtis Fuller and Thad Jones. She has performed and recorded with musicians including Chris Potter, Tom Harrell, Christian McBride, Renee Rosnes, Lee Konitz, Chico Pinheiro and Roy Hargrove. During the pandemic, Fleurine was in the Netherlands, could not perform and found few resources for musicians without work, so she joined the Jazz Union as a volunteer board member in 2020. She became president of the Dutch Jazz musicians’ union BiMpro in 2021, and also founded the ‘Voice for Jazz Musicians in Europe’ in 2022 with fellow European jazz unions. Fleurine writes columns for Jazzism Magazine and hosts a weekly radio show aptly entitled ‘The Balancing Act’ for Dutch Concertradio. She lives in Amsterdam and New York with her husband, pianist Brad Mehldau, and their three children, aged 16, 18 and 22.
UKJazz News: What is the best advice you received about balancing/juggling motherhood and career?
Fleurine: “Somebody else is going to be running the show and taking center stage.”
UKJN: How did you come to motherhood (or how did motherhood come to you, I could say!)?
Fleurine: Music is my first love, and singing, composing, making music with others and touring fulfills me, yet I always knew I also wanted to become a mother one day. I had no idea how that would impact my life but I looked at successful role models-singers and female musicians that came before me-and saw the majority of them seemed to either have no children, or one child, or they had children very late in their careers. This amazing series did not exist two decades ago and, while applauding Nicky for starting it, I have to admit that it took me more than a year to respond, which is probably a very good indicator of how life as a working musician/mother functions!
I met my husband in 1997 during an international tour where we both toured our debut albums-
“Meant To Be!” was mine and “Introducing Brad Mehldau” was his. We both played at the Montreal Jazz Festival in Canada, Umbria Jazz in Italy, and North Sea Jazz in The Netherlands on the same day and fell in love. Since then, we ‘produced’ our own trio ( 2 girls and a boy.)
UKJN: I know you have some interesting statistics regarding motherhood and recording output. Could you share those with us? They’re really illuminating.
Fleurine: Before I got married and became a mother, I recorded two albums and landed a contract with EmArcy/Verve Universal in a period of four years. Since I became a mother of three children, I have released three more albums in twenty-two years. That’s about one album every seven years on independent labels. I think my husband released at least thirty-six albums (but I lost count!). It’s just an indicator that motherhood means your career, in most cases, will not remain at the same speed.( although I realize Brad has an unusually prolific output 😉

UKJN: What information or advice do you wish you’d received but didn’t (and had to learn through trial and error or on the go)?
Fleurine:
- Myth 1: They need you most when they are tiny.
True, babies are helpless but teenagers still need a lot of guidance and your reliable presence. They say, “Small children, small troubles. Bigger children…!”
I found that rang true, especially during the pandemic. Little kids played blissfully. Teenagers felt isolated and understood the severity – a lot less easy and more intense to parent.
- Myth 2: “Oh, but you can drop the baby/ kids off at your parents on weekends/vacations and go on the road!”
That turned out to be way harder than it seemed before our first baby girl was born..I was mostly not at all prepared for the fact that I did not want to be physically separated from my child(ren). So I had to be creative, and with one child I was still able to go on the road a fair amount, bringing her along everywhere until she turned 2 and I had to pay for her flights and she wanted to run around everywhere. When our second baby arrived, I brought our newborn on the road and her four year older sibling would stay with her grandparents no longer than a weekend every other month. So the baby and I could travel to London, Paris, Brussels, Lisbon or Los Angeles for a maximum of three concerts in a row.
I realize it sounds like a lot of air travel but being a Dutch-American family, with relatives on both sides of the Atlantic I always combine work with family visits.
I would only play cities where I had friends or family that were able to watch my child(ren) for the duration of the show. Often the baby slept in the dressing room with a family/friend, or babysitter but I remember hard instances, like singing a ballad on stage and hearing our baby cry in the dressing room. It’s doable but it takes perseverance- being in a hotel room after a gig and woken up several times a night to feed after a show is pretty taxing.
UKJN: Your top tip(s) for other mothers in jazz:
Fleurine: Patience, perseverance, creativity. Tour with fellow musicians/mothers or fathers who understand. Like with other healthy earth-friendly things, focus on local and regional concerts-it’s much more sustainable. Play internationally only for specified carved-out periods per year. Transatlantic gigs are almost impossible because of the jet lag. You have to balance what gives you energy. Children give you lots of energy when you can give them full attention. If you can’t, they’ll feel it and become whiny. I love playing and hanging out with my kids, which does not mean I did not often desire for more hours in the day to work on my music, and to feel more energy. Touring with a baby is way easier than touring with a toddler. Nap when they nap, and make music with your kids. Our oldest daughter Eden sings and plays the flute, our second daughter Ruby plays piano and sings and our son, Damien is a drummer.
UKJN: Baby/child gear tips for travel/touring/gigging:
Fleurine: Best gear hands-down: your breasts.
I breastfed for a good eight years between three children and there is absolutely no toy, tool or anything online that makes your child happier and easier and more chilled out than breastfeeding. You will be frowned upon. Let them frown. The worldwide average age to wean is actually 4 – did you know?!
I am still upset by people trying to make me wean my oldest early because with a crying child in a line at an airport, or in a dressing room in a venue it’s a helluva lot harder to go warm up a milk bottle at lightning speed. Not to mention not being able to fly with liquids and having them be put through X Ray machines.
Always bring a very lightweight foldable stroller. No fancy Cadillac strollers, just a really simple one that can recline. Then you can stroll your baby to sleep. It was useful on the road until they were six or seven years old and it felt like a comfort zone. I turned the pink foldable both our daughters used into a ‘pirate Mobil’ for our son. It was his place to retreat right next to me and sleep during soundchecks and rehearsals.
Babywipes, a water bottle, books for kids they can hold, and if they are older than two, always paper and crayons. No ipad or smartphone- my kids did not get one til they went to middle school -they had to learn how to amuse themselves. There is so much to see while you travel to different cities or countries. It’s important to engage your child and not make them tune out on a screen, in my humble opinion.
UKJN: Best general travel/gigging/tour-with-child advice:
Fleurine: Bring clean clothes in your hand-luggage for yourself and your baby. I remember getting projectile vomited on during a seven-hour flight to New York and sitting for six hours in stinky clothes. It was also no fun for our “neighbors” on the flight!
Bringing an au-pair on the road to stroll the babie(s) while sound-checking and gigging worked well but it also cost most of what I was making that tour (extra flights, extra hotel room, extra meals). I only did it for one month of my life when I was heavily pregnant with our third child and our middle child was two years old.
UKJN: What has surprised you about becoming a parent and remaining engaged with your professional activities and ambitions?
Fleurine: I thought working hard and playing good would be the only requirement and I am optimistic by nature, sometimes to a fault! But I was not as much surprised by how the division of childcare worked out (it’s hard for my husband to change diapers if you are a continent away*), as much as I was by how society viewed it. People telling me I should become my husband’s manager is just one of the odd free pieces of advice I got. When you become a mom you have to get used to getting lots of unsolicited advice! People, even colleagues, call you ‘Mommy”, as if all of a sudden everything you did in your life prior to motherhood vanished at the moment you gave birth to a child.
I tried my utmost to keep as active as I could in my creative output but soon realized my husband’s workload was not about to slow down, rather the opposite. He was often gone on the road for three, sometimes five weeks in a row on another continent and I was not wishing to have our children be raised by others. So, with that particular combination I decided to prioritize staying with our children. This situation only applies where both parents are musicians. And both are bandleaders and not in the same band or orchestra. We felt super blessed with (and did very much desire to have) three children. But in how society views musician-mothers, there were quite a lot of unexpected surprises!
UKJN: Were you surprised by how the jazz industry views musician-mothers?
Fleurine: I was surprised by the fact that professional colleagues from record companies and jazz festivals automatically assume you are ‘out of the running’ as soon as you become visibly pregnant or have a baby ( let alone more than one.) Six months after the arrival of our first born, I lost my record contract with EmArcy-Universal. I had worked so hard to get there. They told me point blank they’d prefer to “invest in someone who was available for promotional tours.” That was, in their eyes, not easy to achieve with someone who was becoming or was a mother. That was shocking to me, the fact that it was decided for me and that they did not even let me try. The upside was discovering how to release something myself even though it was a lot more work!
Even if I managed to release new albums they were not picked up, promoted or given the same attention that my first two albums did- and it had very much to do with how society views you – as if you are out of the rat race and on the side lines. I really hope that society will alter its out-dated outlook towards working mothers.
I was also surprised by how nothing changes that much in playing and touring, not even the wages! Those clubs and festivals stay the same whether you play them at 24, 34, or 44 or at whichever age. But your children do change; they grow develop all the time and you can never get that time back. I did not want to miss it. My advice to fellow moms would be: do not feel anxious. Just relax. Those venues won’t go anywhere (but our oldest is already out of the nest and that happened in the blink of an eye!). Pianist vocalist Shirley Horn has been my role model in this regard.
UKJN: What boundaries have you set for yourself as a mother in jazz (could be related to travel/touring, riders, personal parameters, child care decisions, etc.)?
Fleurine: I tour only when the kids have vacation. That means only three times a year are viable for me. I never leave my kids in the hands of strangers. In our family it’s especially tricky as my husband tours 65-70% of the year. My in-laws live two hours away from NYC, and my parents are on the other side of the Atlantic and part of the year in Portugal. I decided that I wanted to be present for my children’s childhood. Yet I still wanted to be fulfilled musically and I did that by living in NYC where I could play uptown, downtown, on the Eastside or Westside, while being only a couple of subway-stops away from home and ready to wake up at 7am to make our kids breakfast and hang out with them or bring them to school. Trying to keep playing music and writing and booking gigs during nap time, mixed with grocery shopping and doing other boring but necessary household chores during school hours, homework with the kids or bringing them to lessons after school, cooking—Never a dull moment!
(NB: *it is tradition in the Mehldau family that Brad gives me a break in the kitchen whenever he is not on the road – he is an excellent cook who can improvise the most delectable meals, even if you thought your fridge was totally empty!)
Fleurine is organizing a Women in Jazz Festival in the Netherlands called “Transition to equality.” It takes place on March 8 (International Women’s Day) at Tivolivredenburg. The festival boasts an all-female lineup and a day full of panels and discussions focused on topics including why women in jazz are less visible and more marginalized than women in other genres, like classical and pop music.
Mothers in Jazz was started by vocalist Nicky Schrire. The initiative aims to create an online resource for working jazz musicians with children, those contemplating parenthood, and jazz industry figures who work with and hire musicians who are parents. The insight of the musicians interviewed for this series provides valuable emotional, philosophical and logistical information and support that is easily accessible to all. “Mothers In Jazz” shines a light on the very specific role of being both a mother and a performing jazz musician.
One Response
PS : Thank you Nicky Schire for having me in your column!
Thank you London Jazz News Especially Sebastian, and Dan Bergsagel for the cool review of my album. Brazilian Dream.
It is great to raise this awareness, for mothers in jazz .( or parents in jazz doing the heavy lifting at home) I wanted to add an important point ,( if you’ve read the above ). We should also make a case for not deeming a release “old” so quickly; here is what is extremely weird in Jazz: People write reviews about records that were released 60 years ago but if you made a record that you basically barely had time to tour and show the world – because you are keeping all these balls up in the air, and are only able to perform locally or regionally yet your record is deemed ‘old’ in a year and in order to be written about in the press or get club or festival exposure you need to make a new album. This is ridiculous, as barely anyone has heard your “old'” album. Albums should be toured and reviewed based on whether they had exposure in touring or press in a territory , NOT based on THE DATE they were recorded, otherwise there is no way Mothers in Jazz can ever make their mark. The music should reach the audience! Not propelled by make- make -make and make it more more recent ..it does not enhance the quality either to put artists under such pressure.
E.G I have never toured Brazilian Dream in the UK, as such , aside from one review in LJN it is ‘new” to the UK and in principle my band could bring brandnew music to the UK- but according to the ‘rules’ I will never be invited regardless , unless I make a new album, you see how warped that logic is? I will not rest my case until I raise more awareness for all the other talented mothers in music out there 🙂