Tanja Martisa Interview

19 January 2010

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Hello Tanja! How's your 2010 been so far?

Oo! Cold! A mixture actually, hot and cold. Fortunately I've been away travelling in Egypt and I've come back to the freezing cold with a bit of a shock.

Aww Egypt! How was that?

Yeah it was really good, I worked with some musicians in Cairo - one of them is actually Naseer Shamma's on the new album so I was visiting him.

Has the album got that kind of Egyptian vibe to it then?

Yeah a couple of tracks. The albums called Fragile, and the song I've worked with him on is a cover of a Sting song but Richard Niles who's doing the arrangement has given it quite an ethnic-y feel and Naseer Shamma is one of the World's top lute players so with him playing on It it sounds really nice and ethnic-y.

Have you got anybody else featured on the album or is it mainly that kind of influence throughout?

No it's a complete mix between jazz, folk, and then its also got a couple of tracks with an ethnic feel to them. I've got top musicians, very excellent musicians, people like Rick Cottle, James Graydon, Sam Burgess who is a jazz bassist player and then i've also got someone on the album called Gwilym Simcock who is a very well known classical jazz pianist.

Cool!

Yeah I did a couple of tracks on my previous album with him for 'A child in my heart' from my previous album and he's come back on this album which is really great.

So was that your main goal when making the album, did you want to create a multiple amount of emotions throughout it?

I'm not quite sure what my main aim for the album was really! I mean I just write songs that I like I don't believe in completely pitching the whole of yourself into one genre because I mean personally I like all sorts of music, I like anything from Pink Floyd through to Madeline Peyroux. I mean, I don't write Pink Floyd music! But likewise a lot of the stuff I write is a complete mix from folk to jazz, it's really the stuff I write as much as anything.

Would you say that jazz is your greatest love?

Well I first started singing as a classical singer many years ago and that's when I trained more formally as a classical singer and then I had a great vocal coach and as I got into my teens I got into more folk music and then there's jazz. Now I do a lot of jazz covers, so probably yes, to answer your question simply!

Well you spent the first five years of your life in Paris as well, right? Has that had an influence on anything that you do?

Yeah it does actually, I've got a couple of tracks on the new album, probably more so on the new album than on the past album. It's an influence in the sense that I love singers like Edith Piaf but also I've got a couple of tracks where I actually sing half of them in French, so I thought that, I have a father who's a linguist so he checks my translations for me!

I'm sure you're getting it right!

I hope so haha

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