A: My name is Mary Ancheta and I’m leading the Mary Ancheta Quartet. We’re based in Vancouver, BC in Canada. I’ve been to Australia before, but this is our first time playing as a group in Australia, we’re very excited.
I was born just outside of Toronto, but my parents are from the Philippines and their culture is quite musical, there’s always someone singing, there’s always an instrument being played. I think there’s something about the people, it’s just it’s in our blood, just to to be around music and to really love it and enjoy it. There was always music around the house, Elvis, Tom Jones, Anne Murray, the Beatles. As a kid, my sister was taking music lessons, she was learning to play the organ. I was not old enough to take lessons, but I idolized her, and I would play what she was playing. I would play everything by ear, just by hearing what she was doing and trying to copy it. Once I started taking lessons, I’d be playing anything, from Bach to the Beatles, to like some of the R’n’B songs that you’d hear on the radio. Eventually, I started playing in bands in Ontario, I was playing an old organ, a Yamaha copy of a Hammond B3. That’s when I started expanding my horizons a little bit more, listening to The Meters and Booker T and the MGs . Jazz was definitely on my radar, but I was mostly playing funk and soul and R’n’B.
I certainly loved playing music, I started to do some composing, I was playing in a band, but it was hard to imagine doing it as a career, to be honest, it wasn’t a consideration at the time. We were just playing music, because we loved it. When I realised I wanted to go to school for music, I studied classical music, I wanted to have as much knowledge as I can.
I don’t really like the term ‘career’ because it has this business side on it, but we released Level Up, our first EP, as the Mary Ancheta Quartet, and we put a couple singles out after that and I’m feeling really refreshed and energized and excited.
It is very exciting for me to be able to play our music to a wider and more international audience.
I have a great band, I feel very supported, but with that support I can also take some musical chances, it’s kind of like jumping off the edge of a cliff and knowing that someone will catch you, something will break your fall.
I’m inspired by seeing my peers and my friends do well. It feels nice to be a part of that jazz-funk-fusion fabric of Canada, but Canada is big, we have provinces and it feels isolated, and it’s not cheap to get around our own country. Canadians don’t think twice about driving for 10 hours and then play a gig on the same night.
I love Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Betty Davis — we just recently did a Betty Davis tribute with a larger version of my band, we played some of that really gritty kind of funk stuff. There are not a lot of changes, but that groove and that grittiness to me is exciting. You have heroes, as a musician, but then you realise, you sound nothing like them and that’s more interesting.
I love touring and everything, I enjoy getting to connect with the with people and visit different places and get inspired, but there’s something about the writing process that I really thrive in; piecing a song together, and working arrangements with the band and turning it upside down, depending on what you’re inspired by at the moment, that’s what I love and I’d love to do more writing.
I’d love to be able to look back and think about having created a body of work and hopefully having reached a bigger audience. For me, it’s not about playing to thousands of people, but more about connecting and playing for the right audience that really appreciates what you’re doing.