You won't hear a saxophone in the mix with Fragile Zoe, a Burlington funk/fusion quintet. But the band's very earliest roots trace back to the search for a sax player, says Patricia Julien, an associate professor in UVM's Music Department and a driving force in forming the group several years ago.
Julien, a flute player, was living and working as a musician in New York in 1990 when she saw an ad in the Village Voice searching for a saxophonist for a quartet. Given that bands seeking a jazz sax were far more common than those looking for flute, she was in the habit of answering the saxophone ads and making a case for alternative instrumentation. In the case of the Voice notice, her strategy worked. The guy who placed it, guitarist Alec Julien, would become a musical collaborator...and eventually her husband.
Fast forward seventeen years and the Juliens would embark on a new musical venture when they formed Fragile Zoe together with Tom Cleary G'97, keyboards; Joe Englert, bass; and Caleb Bronz, drums.
"The whole funk and fusion thing is something I really enjoy. But as a flute player I hadn't done much of that and I was sort of craving it," Patricia Julien says. "Since opportunities weren't coming along, I realized if I'm going to do this I'm going to have to initiate it."
While they've played around town at Nectar's, Metronome, and on campus at Slade Hall, the band is interested in gaining more gigs at music clubs and jazz festivals. That was the main impetus behind getting in the studio to record their recent CD "Frame Problem," which features compositions written by Alec Julien.
Beyond the spousal tie, there's a real closeness among the members of Fragile Zoe. Englert is Patricia Julien's brother, and Cleary is a fellow faculty member at UVM. "It's a very focused band," says Cleary. "That doesn't happen in a lot of groups. Everybody is listening to each other all the time and just really paying attention."
While they're pleased to have completed the CD project, the band members are frank that they don't feel it captures them at their best. Cleary says there is a certain inevitability of that with the type of music Fragile Zoe is making. "In some ways we were creating a blueprint for what we wanted to have happen live," he says. "Making the recording, then learning how to play it live, it's a normal jazz process. It's been fun getting to know the tunes in a performance situation."
For Cleary and Patricia Julien both, their work as musicians comes into play in their work as teachers. "I want students to see that I'm putting into practice the things that we're talking about in class," says Julien. "And also that I understand what it's like to have the life of a musician, to have the late nights, to have the rehearsals, to have all of the other obligations...."
One last thing, for the record, there's no one named Zoe associated with the band and their music isn't at all fragile. "Our sound is very rhythmic and physical," Julien says. "We liked that contradiction."
Fragile Zoe performs Tuesday, June 8, at the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival's Twilight Series on the Church Street Marketplace. The free event is at the Fountain Stage, 7-8:30 p.m.