Free Jazz Zemire

As a child, Jazz Zemire was fascinated by The Phantom of the Opera. From the moment she saw her first performance, the grandeur of the score and the emotion in the songs spoke deeply to her. As a member of the Texas Girl’s Choir and a self-described “band nerd” throughout high school and while marching at TCU, the Fort Worth native quietly held a dream to one day write a Broadway-style musical. From her first tenuous attempts at songwriting to the occasional open-mic, her efforts were small and fraught with self-doubt, yet it was a drive, though latent, which remained for decades.

Beginning two years ago, a little help from a friend finally gave her the courage and, more importantly, the commitment to take her first proper step toward that end.

While not exactly the first sing-along number in a forthcoming theatrical stage show, Zemire has released her first song. It’s a huge milestone for the aspiring composer that just might give her the courage she needs to begin the process toward working on that musical in earnest. “Your Love Is Dangerous (Jeanne’s Song)” came out on July 27. The artist credits her late and dear friend in the title, Jeanne Arnold, for giving her not only the encouragement to pursue her own music but also the lyrical foundation on which to begin it.

“I kept writing songs and working on them and hanging around my music friends and would show them [and say], ‘Hey, here’s a song I wrote’ and ‘Here’s a song I wrote,’ ” Zemire recalled. “And they were like, ‘OK? What are you going to do with them?’ I was always too scared to do much with them. I would just show them and then hope that for some reason someone famous would come along and pluck me from obscurity and make me a superstar somehow. I had no work or plans for how to actually make that happen.”

Once such friendly sounding board was Arnold. The two met through a mutual love of tennis and became close friends. Before Arnold’s death from cancer in 2022, she gave Zemire a handful of poems she had written and tasked Zemire to write a song around one of them. “She said, ‘Here, take these poems and turn them into one of your songs that’s going to make you famous,’ ” Zemire recalled. “I worked really, really hard to try to get the song as good as I could to honor her. She was just such a positive and upbeat lady, even though she had all these health problems. She had this idea like, ‘Every day is a bonus day, because I probably should have died.’ ”

Prior to her fatal cancer diagnosis, Arnold suffered from a life-threatening heart condition, yet the health challenges never seemed to dull her zeal and appreciation for life. It was this resilience and grace that became the motivation for Zemire.

“She really gave me the bravery more than anything else,” Zemire said. “I mean, she gave me these lyrics, and she was my really good friend, but [mostly] she gave me … the courage to do it.”

Zemire said the track is “difficult to classify,” as it deftly straddles the gap between the climatic works of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Menken and Zemire’s more contemporary influences like Regina Spektor and Adele, but “Your Love Is Dangerous” would sound equally at home on modern pop radio and in the middle of a Disney movie. Its melancholy beauty and symphonic accompaniment sound every bit as Broadway as it does Billboard.

“I really wanted the song to be a mix between Phantom of the Opera and one of the newer James Bond-movie ballads, like Adele or Sam Smith,” Zemire said. “A big ballad that has all the strings and a big orchestra arrangement — that’s what I was going for. It got close, I think.”

Working from Arnold’s text might have been a small challenge, but it was one that also presented an opportunity.

“The words were coming from the same sort of emotional place as something I would have written,” Zemire said. “It was the kind of ‘diary entry’ song that I was already writing and not showing anybody. With it, I could kind of hide and get brave behind her words and then hopefully have the courage to release my own next time.”

Zemire admits that writing “Your Love Is Dangerous” at her late friend’s request came with more than a bit of pressure, yet it was pressure Zemire welcomed because she said it helped her finally push herself outside her comfort zone. “I was working under the model of, ‘One day, Coldplay is going to come by my work and say, “Hey, do you want to come jam with us?” ’ That was my basic approach until this situation came about. It was a lot of pressure, but I put it on myself. I knew I really needed to switch my mentality around from ‘being rescued’ to really trying.”

As a testament to how seriously she took the work, Zemire reached high for help, enlisting A-list producer J Chris Griffin (Madonna, John Legend, Kanye West) to help her craft the song. The process took more than six grueling months, but the two landed on exactly the sound Zemire was hoping for, one reminiscent of Sondheim and Bernstein while at the same time capable of sitting alongside pop icons like Lady Gaga and St. Vincent.

“Your Love Is Dangerous” represents an important first step that — who knows — just might lead toward realizing a childhood dream. Zemire and Griffin are set to begin work on two other songs soon, but for now, she’s just happy with this first step taken. “I’m just really trying to get this song out because this was [Arnold’s] gift to me. She was so nice and encouraging, and she believed in me.”