Gracie Lineham: The Luster in the Frost – by BradQuan Copeland.
The shocking sight of winter’s first shower came just weeks before Thanksgiving. I hate winter; it’s never long before the sky’s grim grey seasons me with loathing for a brief, rent-free stay. The air carries a faint metallic frost that pierces the constricted breath, drawing the fibers inward, curling the shoulders, hollowing the lungs—muscles wound tighter than tape. My body isn’t built for the inevitable, so I seek solace through escape from Mother Nature’s frigid scape.
This came in the form of Grace—well, Gracie Lineham. The pink tint of her lenses, matching the paint on her lips, illuminates the septal ring that sits with effortless expression, radiating a confidence hard to miss in her profile pic. It was clear at first sight that this was a woman of the arts, and needless to say, I was spot on in my assumption. A pianist and beacon of sound, she’s a professor of music theory, building a portfolio rooted in a fusion of jazz, soul, and pop.
Without even listening to her music, I instinctively reached out and was successfully granted an interview at her earliest convenience. Bleeding with curiosity, I swiftly ventured into the upscale lounge—the very essence of her sound. Despite the limited material on her Spotify, she does the most with her strong-willed voice, transmuting the listener into a space encompassed by gallery walls, neighbored with floor-to-ceiling glass windows displaying a slumbrous night sky that reflects a clean, ambient gleam from the linear recessed lights.
There’s a subtle sweetness in the air—a buttery, wooden warmth emitted from the luminous vibration of her vocal performance on In The Night (Birthday Edition), accompanied by a rounded, glassy, organ-like piano synth that wanes toward the end into a snuggling wave, pulsing like an active heart, fading into an airy, lucid space enveloped in numinous murmurs that give way to her soulful finish—one that hooks the journeying ears from vastness back to structured security.
I then swam into the allure of her Afrobeats-inspired tropical duet with Topkid, Double Up, a track blessed with an undeniable chemistry that feels like bare flesh rolling within the velvet silk of bamboo sheets. The foreplay then releases into Gracie’s sexually charged verse, as her voice gasps with erotic tremors, mirroring the euphoric fury of strokes glazed in tender affinity. I long to hear more from this artist, who graciously carved a slot within her busy schedule to converse with me. Upon meeting, I was enamored by the abstract stream of consciousness her mind produces. That’s what made this interview so special—the fact that she was comfortable enough to let her thoughts pour as if speaking to someone she’d known for quite some time.
Interview with Gracie Lineham
RRX: Your music radiates luster, yet I can’t help but feel there’s a faint ache within it, like the sound of something trying to remember itself. When you create, would you say you’re channeling comfort or searching for it?
GL: “I do have this internal ache many times. You know, ever since I was a kid, I’ve been going to the piano as a comfort, I guess. There’s a lot of pain behind my lyrics, so yes, music is a comfort. But there are times where I’m not necessarily channeling comfort—it’s possible you could say that—but I almost feel like channeling the pain creates release in a way. It’s not really comforting to feel pain, but it’s comforting to let it out and then relax. The amount of my saddest songs aren’t released yet. Love Mind is a little bit achy, you know. That one’s reflecting on love. In terms of comfort, I think that song is almost comforting because it’s like I’m telling myself I’m going to do something about this ache. Like I’m going to take action. So yes, music is my therapy.
RRX: As a professor and performer, you live between structure and soul, theory and instinct. How do you navigate that line where knowledge ends and intuition begins?
Gracie Lineham:
GL: It’s really a feeling—it’s an instinct. I come from classically trained pianists, like rigid teachers—Russian through middle school and high school, Korean in college. Somewhere in there, I started writing my own songs, joined jazz ensemble and choir. Even in choir, they gave us sheet music, but then someone came in and started teaching us gospel songs without it. That was the first time we just listened and responded.
I didn’t grow up in the church—I grew up Quaker, sitting in silence in worship. But in college, I joined a gospel choir and that really emphasized using your ears. And in jazz, the more you do it, you realize you have to listen. I had mentors who told me, ‘Stop reading the chart. Just listen.’ Eventually, you have to trust yourself. It took me a long time to get into the intuition of it all, but it’s about time. I’ve been doing this for 20 years—it’s starting to come as instinct rather than just knowledge.
RRX: When you sit with your thoughts at the piano, do you feel more like you’re commanding sound or like sound is revealing something about you?
Gracie Lineham:
GL: I feel like I’m throwing up sound. I have these deep emotions that I can’t really relate to anyone about. You know the word ‘trauma dumping’? I’ve had a hard time releasing on others—it’s almost like the only safe place for me to truly trauma dump is on the keyboard. I just throw my hands down, and the energy comes out.
RRX: There’s a vivid intimacy in your voice; it breathes like a confession whispered into muted light. What does vulnerability mean to you, both as an artist and as a woman trying to thrive within this rigid life?
GL: I think vulnerability, for me, is really just honesty without a filter. As a person, I’ve always had these really deep emotions that I never felt fully comfortable sharing with anyone — not because people were unsafe, but because I didn’t know how to let it out without feeling like I was overwhelming them. That’s the whole “trauma-dumping” thing I mentioned. I carry a lot, and the world doesn’t always give you space to actually unload any of it.
So as a woman, especially one moving through really structured environments — academia, classical training, rigid expectations — vulnerability has always been tricky. There’s this pressure to be composed, to be capable, to perform. But that’s never really matched what I feel on the inside.
As an artist, though, vulnerability becomes a kind of release. It’s like the only place I’m allowed to be completely unguarded. When I sit at the piano, I’m not trying to impress anyone or prove anything. I’m just letting those emotions come out raw. Sometimes it feels like I’m throwing up sound — like my body is expelling what I couldn’t say out loud. In that way, vulnerability isn’t weakness; it’s survival. It’s the safest way I have to tell the truth.
RRX: If every era of your life were a key or chord progression, which would you say you’re living in right now, and what emotion does it resolve into?
GL: That’s a really beautiful way to put it. If I had to describe the era I’m in right now, musically, I’d say it feels like I’m living inside a suspended chord — like an add9 or an 11 — something that’s open, a little unresolved, but full of possibility.
Because so much of my life has been shaped by structure — classical training, strict teachers, sheet music, rules — and then equally shaped by learning to let all of that go so I could finally trust my intuition. I’m somewhere right between those worlds right now. I’m not the rigid version of myself anymore, but I’m also not fully the instinctive version I’m becoming. It’s like I’m still learning to hear myself clearly.
Emotionally, I think it resolves into something like hope… but a quiet kind of hope. Not the triumphant major-chord ending. More like a gentle shift, the beginning of a release. Like I know something in me is changing — something is softening — and I’m starting to trust where that change is taking me. So yeah, maybe something suspended that wants to resolve, and I’m on my way there.”
Further down the current of our condensed interview, she told me about the extended version of her song Tsunami that’s available on her SoundCloud. I tapped in while on my drive to work, placing the epic on repeat so I could fully immerse myself within its destructive atmosphere, letting the floating debris bat against my flesh and the pungent aroma of abandoned dreams and lost memories overwhelm my senses. At its start, it wets your beak with a somber piano intro followed by deific hums that invite you into the eerie intimacy of a pure yet chaotic ballad. This describes the type of love that defies the nature of emotional wellness due to its feral and inextinguishable force that means you harm once let go. It becomes so embedded within your DNA that it lives as your identity, and once released, it waterboards you to the brink of death only to keep you hacking and barely breathing.
It’s led by such anxiety and brain-raking overthinking that creates a trauma bred to either hoist one to thriving clarity or plummet you into a boundless state of perpetual pity. Lyrics like “Don’t be scared, I’m right here, I’ll hold hair while you puke fears, and I don’t wanna leave ya but I have to go now” exhibit a tenderness rooted in turmoil that suffers as a vegetable on life support. This was the experience that birthed the soul of a versatile artist that I believe will obtain wide-scale recognition if focus remains intact.
To my surprise, she mentioned a talent for production and rapping as well, which will be revealed in due time, along with the ample amount of unreleased material she has in storage. And if that’s not enough, she’s also a phenomenal abstract painter whose work shares visual DNA with Salvador Dalí’s surrealism, Pablo Picasso’s abstraction, and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s expressive chaos while maintaining a personal style that portrays something distinct and contemporary. Her work may someday decorate the same decadent gallery walls her music effortlessly conjures. Only time will unravel the mammoth potential within Gracie Lineham.