” I was having a lesson with the great Caroline Henbest, preparing Rebecca Clarke’s ‘Sonata for Viola and Piano’. It was the first time I had ever played a solo viola work by a woman composer, and I felt so connected with her composition. Everything about this work spoke to me. I just had this crazy epiphany, that I didn’t want to play the music anymore, I wanted to speak about it!”
“I started singing ‘You Gotta Have Freedom’ with my first jazz band and when I went to London in 1986 I was actually invited by Pharoah Sanders to sing it with him at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz club. It was an incredible experience and an exciting improvisational one, too. I was so inspired by my first sojourn away from home that I started my own original jazz-funk band, YOYO, after returning to Melbourne in 1989.”
– Which song reminds you of your favourite journey?
– ‘Detour Ahead’ – the Vince Jones version.That song is incredible and I think Vince sings one of the best renditions of it. It reminds me of my favourite journey, because my favourite kind of journey is the one where you end up in a place you weren’t intending.
– Which song reminds you of your favourite journey?
– My favourite journey is life – bit heavy, I know – and I reckon ‘The Best Things In Life Are Free’ is a massive favourite….
“I was literally skipping down a stretch of second avenue in New York for about 30 minutes with George Benson’s ‘Breezin’ on repeat in 2012.”
– Which song reminds you of your most important rite of passage?
Ingrid James: One of the many rites of passage was Spain – both Chick Coreas and Al Jarreaus version. In my twenties, I hopped up on stage with a jazz band in West Berlin and sang it cold with them. That was a brave moment for me.’ Spain ‘wasnt just a normal standard at the time.
– 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.
“I wrote a song as a dedication to this particular genre of song and to Johnny Mercer, it’s called ‘Last Call’.
It’s a great thrill for me that I recorded the song with orchestra in studio A at Capitol Records in Los Angeles, the studio where Sinatra recorded so many saloon bar songs, and Johnny Mercer was one of the founders of Capitol Records. That’s poetry in action.”
“As artists we need to use our gifts to make people think, to make people feel, to make people aware, to make people accountable, to invoke change. I wish to leave my imprint on this world and I wish it to have made a difference.”
