"Hello Mrs. Mimieux, Adolé Varell. We had the pleasure of meeting you the other day. Michelle again ignored the hand offered to her and instead stared unmoved at Adolé. The studio musicians, who did not know Michelle yet, had fallen silent and now looked at each other furtively. Their looks spoke volumes.
"I expect an explanation!" Michelle, with her slightly French accent, announced without further delay. She didn't even think of getting rid of her coat or making a friendlier face to defuse the situation a bit. Instead, she looked on without batting an eyelid at Adolé, who on the one hand tried not to be intimidated any further and on the other hand tried to calm Michelle down.
"Well", Adolé put on. "After they didn't appear here in the studio this morning at 11 o'clock as agreed, we thought about how we could still use the time sensibly. So we decided to start with some uncomplicated arrangements in order not to waste any time. After all, studio time is expensive. But you know that yourself." The whole thing sounded much more bitchy than Adolé had actually intended. After all, she originally wanted to mediate.
Surprisingly, Michelle did not know how to counter the argument "time is money". It therefore had more effect than expected. Moreover, she surely knew exactly when she had an appointment in the studio and how rude and inconsiderate it was to ignore it.
Michelle Mimieux looked at Adolé scornfully from top to bottom, then raised her right eyebrow snappishly and turned around muttering. Then she dropped her cape over one of the couches and threw her scarf behind her. She kept her sunglasses on. Without giving any further explanation for her considerable delay, she turned to one of the studio musicians in a low voice and asked him a question. He nodded at her and led her to an adjacent studio where a grand piano was located. Shortly afterwards the musician returned alone.
Adolé shook his head. "What a performance!" she thought stunned and was happy to be able to devote herself to her own studio work again. "She prefers to get into the mood alone in the side studio...", the musician, who had accompanied the pianist to the other studio, started carefully. No one was interested in his explanation.
After spending some time talking to one of the studio musicians about technique, Adolé could no longer contain her impatience and put off her questions about collaborating with Michelle Mimieux. In fa
ct, she had expected them to join them and agree with her at the outset on the direction in which their work together should develop in order to sound out likes and dislikes regarding different musical styles and develop their own ideas and possibilities. For her this was the most normal process in the world. "Especially when you don't know each other, communication is an important thing," Adolé thought.
But when nothing of the sort happened, she realized that she could no longer avoid a first personal conversation with the world-famous but unappealing pianist.
She briefly sorted herself and then went over to the other studio with determination. Since the door was locked, she knocked softly. In no way did she want to complicate the mood further and sabotage any music rehearsals by hammering too loudly on the door. When nothing happened, she carefully pushed the door handle down and peered into the room. She found Michelle there, lost in thought, sitting at the piano without playing. In contrast to her last two performances, she made a decidedly unself-confident and unhappy impression as she sank into herself there and looked at the silent piano with her head hanging.
Adolé immediately felt an unexpected wave of compassion and sympathy for this woman, who obviously could not behave and who, without exception, behaved inappropriately rude to her. She had not expected this. "What's going on there now?" it shot through her head involuntarily. Somehow she felt sorry for her.
She would have liked to withdraw immediately, because considerate as she was, she didn't want to bother Michelle with the details of her CD in this obviously unfavourable situation. But the business doesn't understand mood swings. After all, they had a big project in front of them that had already attracted worldwide attention. They finally had to discuss the details, at least in which style of music they wanted to approach it melodically.
So there was no way around talking to Michelle, whether it suited her now or not.
Still holding the door handle in one hand, the other leaning against the door frame from the outside, she carefully pushed herself into the open door.
"Mrs Mimieux..." She waited a moment, but nothing happened.
"Mrs. Mimieux???!", she repeated now a little louder and in addition knocked carefully on the door. Scared Michelle looked up. She had obviously not heard her enter and was now scared to death. Immediately the energy changed, the brittle and inaccessible Michelle was back after this short moment of weakness.
"What do they want?" she yelled at Adolé.
"Ahem. Excuse me. I knocked. We need to talk about our project, she and I. We should decide what we want to do, what music we want to make together. Otherwise the band won't know which direction we want to go in anyway. And that's not good," she stuttered, for which she was immediately annoyed with herself.
"Can't it wait?" replied Michelle, simultaneously angry and monosyllabic.
"I fear not," Adolé returned truthfully. "The musicians don't even know to begin with what we have in mind, what we want to do. We haven't even talked about which fellow musicians we like or which music styles and songs we like. Somehow we should find a common denominator that stands for our work. A certain framework. So that even in our absence the musicians know roughly how our CD should sound...".
Undecidedly, Adolé remained standing in the doorway. She expected a reasonable reaction, but as so often, Michelle gave her the exact opposite.
"What makes you think I would discuss this with you? It was your idea, this collaboration. Then you'd better find a way to handle it yourself!" Then she got up, went to the door and slammed it in Adolé's face without another word.
5.
After this repeated failure Adolé was finally fed up. She was tired of running after that stuck-up piano player and chumming up. After all, she was an accomplished musician herself. What she had expected was a cooperation on equal terms, and in her world, this also included that the other component of this work would behave according to her level, her ability and her age. Who did this Michelle actually think she was?!
Furious she had returned to the studio musicians and had to calm down again. Furious, she told them that "Mme Mimieux", as she was called from now on, had not rested to tell her. Therefore she could do what they wanted, including Adolé, because of her, they wouldn't take Michelle into consideration any more - the main thing was that sometime an album was made. The only important thing was that it was presentable and that it could possibly be used for a collaboration with "Mrs. Mimieux", although this was demonstrably not the case. But as long as the studio musician, who was responsible for piano, piano and all other keyboard instruments and had an excellent command of them, could play the corresponding passages, everything was in order for Adolé from now on.
And now that the fronts had been settled and Adolé did not have to make any further efforts to please Michelle or to work peacefully with her, life was much more relaxed. Adolé at least felt freed from the pressure to establish a reasonable collaboration with the pianist - she had done everything. Ultimately, this was something that Mrs. Mimieux should also strive for and was also her responsibility. But if she blocked herself in this way, she would accept it from now on.
In the meantime it didn't matter to her how she had to look back on this session at the end of the studio time. At least a rather mannerly result was guaranteed and that had to be enough. In her eyes all this was not her problem anymore. After all, she had tried hard to create a common working basis and to provide polite manners - but thanks to "Mrs. Mimieux" unfortunately without success.
The next days were reasonably productive and quiet together with the team. While Adolé, as usual, came into the studio quite early and successfully composed and rehearsed one or the other song with a small group of musicians, Michelle always appeared - if at all - in the late afternoon and then stayed until late into the night. She had won over two of the studio musicians and was now working independently with them on other pieces. After all, they hardly overlapped in their presence in the studio.
Adolé, who was used to seeing the positive in everything, had finally made a conscious decision for this project and for an approach with jazz music and thus for a style of music that was still missing in her repertoire and that she liked very much. It was precisely this slightly swinging bar music that particularly appealed to her. With these rhythms one automatically imagined a smoky, sparsely lit New York cellar bar. She literally saw a lonely piano player playing evergreens by Frank Sinatra and Cole Porter, the Pepita hat on his head, an almost burned butt in the corner of his mouth and a whiskey glass on the piano. This was something completely new for her, a new experience she liked despite all initial doubts and in which she is now completely absorbed.
Now and then she even almost regretted that they basically had the world's best pianist in their immediate vicinity and at their disposal and could have worked intensively with her on these atmospherically dense and imaginative compositions. She loved studio recordings and had her most creative moments when she felt most comfortable, usually after hours in the recording studio, when the ashtrays were overflowing with the cigarettes smoked by the band and they had really grooved. Unfortunately, the stiff and unapproachable Michelle Mimieux didn't fit into the picture at all, who obviously did everything to sabotage a real team result and who seemed to be able to work alone, isolated and independent from the others in the studio.