– When did you realise that you have found your own voice as an artist?
– I feel that my individual voice started to really become solidified on my previous CD, ‘Rush’. I hope to keep refining it.
Category: Interviews
– If your life was to become a movie, which tune would be on the end credits?
– Five Days In Hermosa, by this Canadian jazz musician named Mike Field. It’s another fun tune, and it’s instrumental so it would work really well for end credits. I wrote this tune because every time I’d travel on tour from Canada to New Zealand and Australia, I’d stop through Los Angeles and would play at The Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach. It’s such an iconic club with so much jazz history, and even though there’s a lot of karaoke and reggae bands playing there these days, there’s still jazz three days a week. Each time I was there, it would take me about five days to rehearse with the band and play the show, so after doing that a bunch of times, it inspired this tune, which I ended up recording on my third album.
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“My music sounds like me and it sounds like someone who has not grown up in a major centre like Melbourne, or New York, or London. For a long time I was ashamed of this. But I have begun to realise this is also what makes my music worth listening to; its a part of what makes it unique. Matthew Sheens is also from Adelaide (although he’s been living in NY for many years) and Myele Manzanza comes from Wellington in NZ (which is even smaller and more isolated than Adelaide, where I am from). All three of us are coming from the outside of the centre of the worlds we love, participate in and contribute to. The Outsiders is my reflection on all of this.”
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“For me singing is catharsis. I really believe a vocalist’s one and only job is to be a great storyteller, that’s more important than hitting the right notes, more important than being able to read or write music. So when I’m on stage, I’m just 100% immersed in the song”.
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“The guys in the band did such a great job of writing music to really bring Lionel Loueke into the group so he’s a fifth member as opposed to just a guest. I would have loved to be present in the studio just to watch the magic happen!”
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“This project deals with subjects that were big issues in America from the ’30s to the ’70s and the female singers at that time raised their voices, trying to change things with their singing. If some people may have been thinking that these issues were solved nowadays, Donald Drumpf’ s America and the #metoo movement show that it’s not the case. So by covering these songs, we raise our voices too, and keep on trying to open consciousnesses with music, which is our only weapon.”
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“When you think of Bob Marley or Peter Tosh and their music, it’s a snapshot of what the political landscape is, they’re saying: this is the world we live today; wouldn’t it be better if it was a better place? I think that’s the question that I want to raise in my music.”
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“I’m a big fan of electronic music and electronic pop, and I feel the Kennedy Snow music is headed in a very textural direction, with improvisation being probably the strongest jazz element present, rather than traditional jazz harmony or the swing aspect. But then again, jazz these days can be so many things that I struggle to label it as ‘jazz’, just that all the members have a jazz background.”
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“Giving a label to music is difficult for me. I would rather give insight into the music by explaining ‘Provenience’ as a series of improvised responses based upon thematic material written within a standard song form framework.”
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“Ultimately my aim was to investigate the type of rule-based composition strategies that were pretty new to me at the start of the project, while allowing plenty of space for the guys to do their thing and bring it all to life.”
