Emily Saxe (say it like there’s no “e”), an American who issued her previous albums while living in Bangkok, Thailand, is back home again and thrilled to be delivering Keeping You In Mind, her fourth CD and first in the U.S.

“Music has always been a huge part of my life,” says Emily. “One of my relatives was a traveling musician in the late 1800’s (I still have his ‘portable’ pump organ!), my grandfather wrote a hit song with Johnny Mercer, and my mother is a fabulous classical jazz and classical pianist in her own right. I spent years studying classical and jazz piano, but what really drew me in was my mother’s sheet music collection; we basically had The Great American Songbook stacked on the family piano. I spent hours and hours losing myself in those tunes, and I realized what I really wanted to do was sing.” And sing she did, performing every chance she got during high school and college at Yale, including playing piano bar. “Now there’s a real learning experience,” she laughs, “singing, playing piano and fending off drunks, all at the same time!”

After college, Emily switched directions, getting a law degree from Georgetown and leaving singing behind. But in 1995, when Emily followed her husband to Thailand, she finally decided to follow her heart. “If you’re really a musician, it just pursues you,” she says. “It never leaves your soul.” Emily released three CDs in that part of the world, each one her reinterpretation of legendary songwriters like the Gershwins, Harold Arlen, Rodgers & Hart, and others. And they ate it up from Australia to Japan, leading to performances at the Sydney Opera House and other top Asian venues, as well as to two of her albums going Top 10 in jazz in Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok. “I never expected it, but Asia was a great place to restart my music career,” offers Emily. “I was fortunate enough to hook up with some great musicians, people loved my music, and I was able to perform at some fabulous venues and get to know a fascinating part of the world.”

Since her return to the U.S., Emily has been re-imagining herself. “I’ve spent the last several years thinking, ‘What material do I want to do and what do I want it to sound like?’” The answer came when she hooked up with bassist David Piltch, who, along with arranging, writing and playing on many Holly Cole records, has also recorded and written songs with k.d. lang for more than a decade.

Saxe and Piltch connected straight away, and it was this collaboration that led to the sound for this new album. “David basically said, ‘Get the piano out of the room.’ It was such a revelation,” Emily admits, “because I grew up playing the piano, my mother plays the piano, my grandfather played the piano. David suggested I try a guitar-based sound, which was just a radical shift for me. It changed my whole approach, really softening everything and giving the songs a much more introspective feel. It gets me to the heart of the lyric in a different way.”

Keeping You In Mind is co-produced by Piltch and Saxe and mixed by Grammy Award–winner Jay Newland (who co-produced Norah Jones’s Come Away With Me). The sessions were rounded out by an impressive cast of players, including Piltch on acoustic bass, Greg Leisz (Joni Mitchell, Brian Wilson, Shawn Colvin and countless others) on steel guitar, Jay Bellerose (Paula Cole, Cassandra Wilson, T Bone Burnett, Ani DiFranco) on percussion, keyboardist Patrick Warren (Fiona Apple, Tracy Chapman, Sam Phillips), and Juno Award–winning guitarist Rob Piltch. The arrangements are jazzy morsels of contemporary Americana, with rootsy instruments and hypnotic rhythms replacing the piano/bass/drums lineup from Emily’s first three albums. Clearly, Emily is once again singing the music in her soul. – by Jim Nelson