Speaking of Jovanotti, you met him last year at Luminato
Festival.
Yeah, that’s right.
What was that experience like? You wanted to meet him
for a long time.
It was absolutely thrilling. I admire him and think he’s one of
the rare contemporary artists with so much integrity. What
you see is what you get. It’s not a show. He is the real deal.
His writing is tremendous and the quality of his voice is so
compelling and again, so real, that he’s the whole package.
From the live shows, to the art and the work itself. For me,
he’s a big inspiration and to shake his hand and to be able to
say that to him was a check off my bucket list. The next on
my bucket list is to be able to work with him, but one step at
a time [Laughs].
You’ve experimented with so many genres and now you’re
doing the whole Espresso Manifesto thing, where you’re
writing or covering Italian music. Yet, you come from a
background of electro-acoustic jazz. How has your music
and style evolved over the years?
I don’t know if it’s really evolved or if I’ve just gone in circles
and explored things that interest me. You know what I
mean? Jazz was something I studied when I was in university
and I was interested in it, so I followed it. The whole world of
electronica was something I was interested in, so I followed it.
Now, Italian music is something I am interested in, so I went
after it. I go down these roads that pique my curiosity and
then I bring them back and throw it in my songwriting pot,
mix it all up, and I see what happens.
Now that there’s time for you to explore cultural music
in general, be it Italian or any other traditional genre,
what kind of impact does that have on a North American
audience?
I think they don’t realize that Italian music; especially Italian
popular music, is comparable to other world music. People
listen to Brazilian music, African, French and they just take
it in and appreciate it. To be able to present it as a North
American kind of shakes up their heads a bit and makes
them realize that Italian music is another world music. I
think that’s the impact that I find I’m having on audiences
that are becoming aware of Espresso Manifesto. They’re curious because of the project name, and then when they hear
the music, they say, “oh wow, I like this,” and it happens to
be in Italian! That’s really cool to see people break stereotypes
of what people thought of Italian music.
Amongst all of this, how would you define your sound
today?
I would call it “Earthy, Modern, Pop, Jazz, World, Cool.”
It just really has all of those elements. There’s a mixture of
things in there. It’s contemporary, but there’s a part of me
that’s a little retro. There’s a part of me that feels I was born in
another time. That shows up every once in a while. But, it’s
really music of today. How do we define any music today?
I’m definitely not in a rock band, indie or straight up electronic. But I think a lot of artists are a combination of a lot of
things. Does that make sense?
Yeah, completely.
It’s hard to define. If you had to put a big label on it, I would
say that it’s pop music. It’s not straight up jazz or world. It’s
modern.
Now that you’re pushing so many genre boundaries, why
is this significant to your show at Koerner Hall?
It is really the first time that an Italian pop project like
Espresso Manifesto will be playing at Koerner Hall. Anything Italian at Koerner Hall will be something classical,
like an opera or ensemble. To be able to bring this project
to more of a mainstream audience is really exciting. Now,
we’ve broken the barrier a bit. Which is what we’ve always
wanted to do. To be on stage with John Pizzarelli, who is part
of the mainstream, is really quite cool. We’re manifesting our
manifesto on a more mainstream stage.
Koerner Hall is a great venue. That should be very exciting. And in October, you’ll be performing at the Gala for
CHLOE Magazine’s Fall issue launch.
It’s kind of the same thing. There’s so much integrity. A lot of
great work has been put into this magazine. There’s so much
substance, and to be able to be a part of this, to be able to
perform in a place for people that probably wouldn’t listen
to or know about is exciting. I can’t wait to see how they’ll
react. It’s another fantastic opportunity to bring this music to
a different audience.
Considering that our audience of female readers is so vast,
what mark would you want to leave on other women
experiencing your performance?
To be authentic, to be who you really are and to not construct this persona that you think you need to be in order to
please people or society’s ideas of what they think you should
be. A big thing for me, too, is that women should come
together and really celebrate one another. A lot of times, we
can be against each other. We have insecurities that make us
behave a certain way, but for women to come together and
celebrate our strengths, skills and beauty, both inside and out,
that would be fantastic.
Daniela’s Top 6
First live music experience
Engelbert Humperdink at the