It is a privilege and an honor to perform on Steinway pianos.
I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.
But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.
So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.
Love songs last because they are about feelings that don’t change.
I’m not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I’d rather be figured out.
You know, we recently played a benefit with my husband, Elvis Costello, and Sir Elton John, who is a mutual friend of ours. Playing with Elvis and Elton and accompanying them with my band was a pretty euphoric experience.
My dream as a child was to play with a bass player like Ray Brown, who played with the Oscar Peterson Trio. The feeling I had listening to his work was almost carnal, so to actually play for him was earth-shattering for me.
I spent a lot of time playing in miserable places that were not a lot of fun. Somebody once said it is character building and I was like: My character is just fine.
I always wonder what drives us as Artists.
I mean, I don’t think I would call Claus to do an album of big band tunes. You know, just like arrangers write for the artist they have in mind; you have to keep in mind if you’re going to work with Claus Ogerman. You invite him to do what he does.
Sometimes I can’t get out of the character because the story is very intense.
Denzal Sinclaire embodies the tradition of the great singers I love like Nat Cole, yet definitely has his own voice. He is one of my favourite singers...
I think that I was being much more uptight about those things before. I feel like I really don’t have to prove anything at this point other than what I’m doing.
There were some things that I found I really enjoyed singing about; like, on the title track, there’s this film-noir character of a woman who’s sort of losing it in a room.
The album is a definite departure. I haven’t written original material before, except for one song on my first album, but Elvis and I did six songs together on this one.
The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out.
I’ve sung a lot of emotional songs, but when you’re writing it’s very difficult to decide what to reveal.
You’re creating an intimacy that everybody feels, that it’s their experience, not yours. I’ll never introduce a song and say, now this song is about ‘my’ broken heart.