“The Singh & Blanes duet is more about romanticism and flashbacks to a more romantic time, while my own solo work is about my intricate thoughts and emotions; it’s all about me being by myself, in solitude. It’s a bit more personal and reflects my individual take on the world. Then my jazz project is about my compositional ability and my fluency on the piano”.
Category: Interviews
I told my Dad about it and he was so happy to hear that [Bill Frisell and I] would be working together. I said something like, “Hey Dad, I’m a jazz cat!”
I get tired of seeing films about loud, arrogant figures who feel the need to be up front, in front, or affronting; even the way Bill arranges the band on stage says so much about his attitude, how its about the music, how he tries to affect the music from the inside out.
“I’m not a big fan of the word fusion, because it feel binary to me, and I’m trying to achieve a sound that is multifaceted and fluid. And I think this sound reflects our world today, one which is increasingly more complex and interdependent”.
“How I’ve evolved as an artist is parallel to how my life has evolved: new experiences, new friends, moving countries; I think that all changes the way I play in some way”
“We’re always watching the dancers and responding to them – sometimes closely following the actions with musical cues, at other times creating a dynamic and textural sense of the emotion in the dance through the music. On the other hand, the dancers are listening to us and responding, taking their timing cues from us sometimes.”
“I want singers to dig deep into their potential, to strive to be the greatest musicians they can be, to sing with integrity, unapologetically into the world”
Those who saw the Shaolin Afronauts last year shouldn’t expect the sequel to be just a repeat of the original. “We didn’t want to repeat anything that we had used; we wanted this to be a completely new experience for the listener”, says Ross McHenry. “This time, we’ve actually written a lot more new material; we’re working towards a new album so it was a bit of an opportunity to ‘try some new material”.
“There is undeniably an underrepresentation of women across all aspects of the music industry. You can’t be what you can’t see.”
“I wanted to surround myself with musicians that made me want to play. I would have been happy just to sit back listen to them play together in that setting. Apart from how easy I find it to make music with them, they all have strong personal voices and I wanted them to put their own mark on my tunes, which they did”.