 Welcome to SOWAS. Those of you who haven't been here before or are not used to coming to SOWAS and sitting in lectures in this lecture theatre, you're very welcome. My name is Casper Melville, I am a senior lecturer in the School of Arts and perhaps more pertinently I'm the director of the Festival of Ideas this year, of which this is one of the events. y second event, we hav a launch on Saturday night in the lecture theatre on the other side of over there with steam down playing with some of our so as students. The theme of the festival this year is Thinking Through Music so there is a music theme running through our all, all our events. After this one, there's going to be 10 more events if you can pick up a book like that will tell you what events we've got, we've got panels on dance. We've got a DJ Summit. We've got a variety of parties. We're having an old ryw brydu'r carfenniadau Cymru gyda rhoi bod yn ymweld ddim ar hyn o'n gweithio'r recynyddiaeth yr ac yn dwygo ar temple ac mae'r cyhoeddur ymweld yn dwygo'r cysylltu gwahaniaethau cymru. Er mwyn mae gweithio'r rhai hon, ond ychydig i'w gweithio'r rhai o ran fwy o'r gwneud. Oedd eto iddyn nhw'n cael ei wneud bod ni'n gweithio'r lluniau a'r aes lluniau. Mae rhai o'r cysylltu cheesg hon, mor ydw i ei ffordd o bryd i'r lluniau, Where Alarm, there is a fire exit just there. We're hoping that's not going to happen. All we can go out the front doors out there. There are toilets just to the left of the main lobby. The ladies' toilet is on the ground floor and the men's on the floor above. There's some people here who are filming and recording for the festival. But we would prefer if you didn't use your phone to record, Nicky and please turn your mobile phones off. Rwy'n credu bod rwy'n seliddo, rwy'n gweithio'n meddwl iawn yn y bach anodd a'is cyfnodd a gennym gweithio'r ystafell. Rwy'n gwneud hanor已r wrth hierog, rwy'n meddwl i'r pryd yma. Rwy'n meddwl i'r rhoi, Kate Tahi, hefyd ar y�, ond rwy'n meddwl chi i'r poem, yn fyrdd ar Niki i fod yn ymdarnol amser hyn. Ac yn gyfan a beth sydd wedi bod hefyd yn digwydd serianfa'r ffordd mae'r bwysig iawn ac a'r cyfnod i'r ffordd yn gweithio'n blaenau gweld â'r tu, am y gwasanaeth y ffrindio a oboedd y ffrindio chi ddim yn cael ei pryd yn gweithio'n llunydd ei wneud. Yn waith dyma'r gweithio, Nicky Yr haw yng nghyd-ogawr, wedi gweithio'n digwydd – yn un i'r ystodol i'r cynnwys i Niadau UK, peonist, composer's, teachers. She's worked with many of the top UK jazz musicians, people like Steve Williamson and Jason Yard, and Cleveland Watkiss, in fact she made a brilliant album, a duet album with Cleveland Watkiss, the singer. But she's also played with Nina Cherry and with The Roots, the US hip-hop band The Roots, which she was a member of for a while. We're going to find out more about that in a little bit. Among the many awards that she's won, she's been the independent, she won the independent award for best jazz musician of the year in 1996, and she was the jazz FM instrumentalist of the year in 2017, which gives you a sense of how long she's been doing this, a very, very high standard. I just want to read a few words from the jazz journalist, Kevin Legendre, writing in 2016. Those who have seen Nicky, he says yo but I'm saying Nicky, those who have seen Nicky will testify to her virtuosity on the keyboard. Drawing on pioneers from the world of jazz, classical music and soul. Above all the likes of Herbie Hancock, Alexander Skriabin and Stevie Wonder, yo has developed a style that can move from explosive rhythmic energy to understated lyricism at a moment's notice. Indeed her ability to conjure up the most vividly evocative of moods by way of subtle probing harmony has been proven time and again. I'm really excited. When I put this festival together, it was one of the first things I thought I really want to get Nicky to come in. I really want to talk to her and I really want to talk to her when she's sitting at a piano. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Nicky yo. What a fantastic sparkly outfit, Nicky. Thanks, thanks, Caspar. I wanted to match the brilliant Soaz logo that you guys have come up with. It was all brilliantly planned. Welcome to Soaz, I'm so happy that you're here. This all kind of started for me. We met here, didn't we, about, I don't know, six or seven years ago. We had a panel for the students, which is about careers, I think, in the music industry, something like that, and you kindly came in to kind of contribute to that. The thing that really struck me, in addition to the fact that you were really nice, was that you said, oh, I grew up around the corner. It's not often that you meet people who've grown up around the corner. Soaz is full of people from all around the world, but actually even not many people live in this area. A lot of people, the English people who teach it, so as often aren't from London. So tell me a bit about how it was. Where did you grow up? What was it like, where you grew up? Well, I come from a generation, sorry, I come from a line, a lineage, of people that have grown up in this area. So I'm mixed. My British side, my mother, she grew up in Holborn, and her father grew up in Holborn on Theobalds Road, and his dad did. I figure we've all played at Corms Fields when we were kids. My son did too. So when I say that to people, they're like, oh my gosh, that's so central London, but it wasn't always really nice around here. Expensive. Yeah, it was a bit rundown, and it wasn't like it is now. But in some parts, it's like London, it's always been at highs and lows of different areas. So I feel really connected to this area on 50% of my DNA. So it doesn't make you quite a cockney living round here, but it is... I'm an actual official cockney, because I was born in Bart's Hospital. Oh right, so it's the sound of Theobalds Road. Right, and there's a trace of that in how you speak, which is... Not half, yeah. Exactly. Which again is something relatively unusual, and we'll talk about this in the world of jazz or in the world of academia, in fact. Could be a bit posh when I'm ready, if I need to be. Code-switching. Yeah, well you have to, right? Or do you? That's a bigger conversation. Tell me about music in your young life. When did it start to emerge as something that was interesting to you? What kind of music was around in your household? So I grew up in St John Street in a block of flats above a library, and yeah, I grew up with my grandparents and my mum, and they would listen to all of the hits back in the day from what's the guy's name? Maxie Bygraves. Those kind of hits. Those kind of hits. And then my mum was really into Ravi Shankar. She was also really into the Stones, and she loved reggae, so she listened to loads of reggae, so a lot of her friends were from the Caribbean. So I grew up around that culture too. So that was my sort of early sound world. And then tunes from television, because in the 70s and the 80s, everyone had the TV on all the time, right? That was the main thing. So music from adverts. When I was really small, my mum, my godmother, bought me this little tiny xylophone, so I'd always thought it was my favourite toy, and a record player, so I always wanted to hear music. But when I was three years old, my grandmother bought me a piano, which was from a second-hand shop antique, probably was just a cheap second-hand piano. A big proper toy piano? No, a tiny like Peanuts, like Schroeder's Peanuts. Yeah, you know the small, tiny, tiny pianos. So I'd pick out tunes that I would hear on the TV, like little riffs, and they were like, oh, maybe she has an ear for music. So I was about five years old and I had my first piano lesson, and my mum bought me a bontempi keyboard that we kept in the hallway. And then a few years fast-forward into I was about seven, my grandad who was a black cab driver, he put in extra shifts every night to pay off a loan that he'd got. He got a loan to buy me a piano, which I still have. It's an upright piano. It's a very bad piano. It doesn't sound good now. He took out a loan for £300, which was a lot of money in the 70s. And that got me really into playing. So they'd already identified at this point that music was going to be your thing? 100%. Did you go out and play in the streets and do that as well? Were you also part of the community of running wild on the streets? I mean, 1980s, 70s and 80s in London, it was quite rough in some ways, wasn't it? It was quite difficult. It was quite difficult. It was rough, but it was also quite like a village as well. So everybody looked out for each other. It wasn't sort of, now people won't really let their kids out on the street. I'm sure some of you guys experienced the UK around that time and you could pretty much go out even as a seven-year-old and hang out with your mates. And it was pretty safe. So at which point, so you've got your piano and I think when we were talking earlier, ahead of this, you were already kind of making things up yourself as well as learning at the same time. Tell us about that. What gave you the impetus to be composing when you were young? It was just kind of an inner urge. I know Joe Henderson's wrote a jazz tune called Inner Urge. That one there. But yeah, it was a compulsion almost. I thought I'm reading, I'm learning to play, I was having some elementary piano lessons and I thought, I'll give that a go. So with the very limited knowledge I had, I think I wrote a piece that was pretty much limited to like Minims and Quatchits. It was called The Dragons are in the Dark. I'm not going to play that tune. The Dragons are in the Dark. My goodness, it's quite dark. My mum threw it away by accident, which is a shame, I would like to have kept it. Don't you still remember it though? I do, I'm not going to play it. We'll have time for requests at the end. So you know. Maybe I'll do a remix of it at some point. I think it was interesting because at that point I thought in order to be able to capture my ideas I have to write them down because I was limited in what I knew. I was limited on which notes I knew on how to read and rhythms and all of that. I pretty much limited it to what I could replicate. Even if I'd heard stuff that was like 16th after the beat, I wouldn't have understood how to write that down when I was five. How did you know about Minims and Quatchits and that kind of stuff? I had a couple of lessons. I had sporadic lessons here and there until I found the teacher that I liked for a little bit. So a couple of piano lessons and they would come to the house and all of that. But you made the point just now where you said not jazz as if your entry into music wasn't specifically via jazz. It was just by you playing. At what point did you become aware that there was a thing called jazz or a world out there? I feel like I've got my back towards certain people. Is it alright? Is that better? We're trying to get everybody to hodl round and be in the same area. I'm a people person so I can't just pretend people are not here. It's practice to jazz. I heard the word jazz in my head. It was like a calling and I didn't know what it was because I didn't grow up around listening to jazz. So I would ask around my nan, my grandmother, my nan, to be a really sweet woman and she used to do lots of shopping for some of the neighbours that were disabled so there's one lady who just really couldn't get out. My nan would just do that as a nice thing to do. She didn't publicise it, she would do that. But this woman was a piano player and a very good piano player and she had this little contraption that had been built for her to be able to reach the pedals. So she was like an access that I had to this world of a professional musician because she would actually go out and go and do gigs and then brought back and be in her house. So that was her escaping to the world and she'd earned a bit of money from it as well. So I said to her, I can hear this word jazz in my head can you show me what that is? And she's like no I can't. I don't know how to play jazz but I have a copy of Jungle Book Bear Necessities which is kind of jazzy. So I sort of read that and saw these chords what is that? Try to work them out to my best knowledge. I'm like what's that seven on that chord symbol? What does that mean? I need to find that. I need to find the answers to that. And then it just kind of evolved that when I was in secondary school there was Don Rendall who was teaching at my school. Okay so hang on that's weird or not weird but that's quite surprising. Don Rendall if you don't know is a very well known great tennis axe player an unusual man in many ways and we might get on to that in a minute but why is he teaching in your school? I mean surely he's touring the world with jazz bands at this point isn't he? Well I think it's like any musician you end up being a chameleon you do a bit of teaching, a bit of writing and all of the things that kind of interest you within the realms of musical life so he was teaching there as a job Perry teacher saxophone teacher so I studied saxophone with him. I don't play saxophone anymore but I wish I could but I probably wasn't have been very good. I wasn't really my natural voice. But clearly at that point you probably weren't aware that he was a famous jazz musician then you just thought he was a teacher in school right? Yeah I mean he was talking about doing gigs and stuff like that but I hadn't really got a concept of what that was but I knew I had this calling and I was like tell me about jazz what is it? So he'd say to me go and listen to Coltrane, listen to Sonny Rollins listen to Herbie, if you listen to all of Miles's albums and hear any significant piano player for the last 50 years so we're talking about from the 80s that would have been going back to 1920s right? So he'd send me these little give me these little lists and send me off and so I'd go to the record library which was underneath the flats where I grew up This is a section of the library where you can borrow records I remember that Take them home and legally tape them Of course home taking is killing music it used to say on the inner sleeve Pre-spot if I kill in music but let's not go there Then I'd tape stuff I remember one time I taped Phil Collins on one side of a tape because I really loved Phil Collins and I taped Africa Brass on the opposite side That's quite a combination an unusual combination which kind of is you isn't it because there's always a pop element or you're quite happy to associate yourself with pop music as well as jazz aren't you? Record companies gave music different genres It's all in energy I mean jazz If you say jazz it's such a broad thing How can you listen to a weather report tune and listen to art tape and say it's the same thing It's a completely different voice a different musical expression different rhythm But yeah I'm very open to all of that and I love it all if it's good it's good Did you find yourself copying the solos? The thing with a tape is I would listen to that on the way to school so I'd listen to Phil Collins on the way to school and loving it because it was just really exciting and contemporary at the time and in order to listen to Phil Collins again I had to endure Africa Brass because it's very expensive to rewind your cassette With a pencil sometimes you can take a long time I'd have to listen to Africa Brass and then at one point there became a switch where I was craving to listen to Coltrane and it's like the familiarity of the obscure obscure sounds they became familiar to me and I started to be more interested in all of the other things that was surrounding that sound world so I'd then listen to the drums and listen to the brass arrangements in the background listen to Coltrane solo and it became really interesting not like I fell out of love with Phil Collins I decided to embrace Coltrane There was just more of it more of it there so this again this is just a very direct relationship between you and the music it's not being done via you're not going to jazz clubs at this point or you're not seeing a lot of jazz on TV or even I suppose you see the record label the record covers so that gives you some sense were you aware that this was the music of Afro Americans primarily Yeah definitely I mean a mate of mine worked at Ronnie Scots and she was a waitress she was an art teacher in Hybrid Grove and she was also a waitress in Ronnie Scots and she got us into the club so I think my first jazz gig I went to I was 14 and I saw Steve Williamson was supporting Irakere the great Cuban band so that I was like yeah this is where I want to be so I sort of I was surrounded by it almost just by it being my journey things just came in the way into my path this jazz world just opened up to me Is there something that you could play us that kind of captures that moment or that sort of that falling in love with that kind of thing? Yeah I think I'm going to play a piece that I wrote I just feel like playing it's not even to answer the question it's called The Healer and I wrote this for Shubhamudgal we did a great tour Shubhamudgal fantastic Indian vocalist north Indian classical tradition and we did a tour in the year 99 I think it was a 2000 and I wrote this piece for her The Healer I feel a bit choked up I must say sitting so close it's so powerful tell me about yeah back to your story then so we've got you as a teenager we've got you with Don Rendell at school teaching you saxophone and you starting to get inklings about jazz and then this is such an interesting part of your story it kind of connects with my interests in so many ways because the person that you then found in your life was Ian Carr who is a great you know for me I love him both because he's a brilliant trumpet player and Miles Davis is his idol and he's my favourite but he's also a writer and a teacher and he wrote a great book about Miles Davis BBC presenter so you found yourself in one of these very interesting institutions which is this kind of somewhere not a formal school not a music college or anything like that but something in between tell us about it yeah it was a really interesting place the weekend arts college in kentish town I mean it still exists the weekend arts college but it's run by different people now and it's a completely different thing at the time there weren't really many places to study jazz informally as well and there weren't many shops going on especially ones that were as open minded as Ian's so Ian really encouraged everybody to compose encouraged everybody to listen to stuff that wasn't you know just coming from the great American song book so we'd learn like Eberhard Faber tunes and we'd learn like Ian's tunes and we could bring our own music in and it was just very open minded so it was a place for jazz and dance and theatre and lots of the people that went to that particular arts place and it was a weekend in kentish town ended up being professional in all of the fields they went to so like Danny Sopani his amazing actor he was in Black Panther I think Che Walker he's an amazing actor and he trained up Michaela Cole and Phoebe Waller Bridge so from all the drama side of things and Joseph used to go there Courtney Pine Michael Mendesi Jason Rubello anybody that went to WAC created a career for themselves in their own voice and was it specifically designed for people who might otherwise not have had access to that kind of education many of the people you just mentioned are young black Londoners who might not have found themselves at the Guildhall was it specifically aimed at that? Yeah I think so I mean as a kid you're less aware of all of the kind of reasons for places being in existence you just think oh that's handy I can go to that and it feels like a great place to be but actually thinking back I definitely think they were ahead of their time and the woman who started Upsilia Greenwood she definitely is very conscious and questions everything from her own unconscious bias to everybody else's and makes any environment super inclusive so I really feel that that definitely was the energy and the catalyst for her starting up that place Yeah and tell us a bit about a contemporary perhaps something that came after us but was inspired has been Tomorrow's Warriors and that kind of programme and talking to the people who've been through that programme on the one hand there's a great openness and on the other hand there's quite a lot of rigour about it tell us about that anyone can go but you don't necessarily stick around do they have high expectations of you what was it like to as a kind of kid to come into that environment with someone like Ian Carr what was he like as a teacher Ian was he was born in Scotland he grew up I think he grew up in Newcastle oh that right Jeremy University in Newcastle thank you for that so he went to the army he was army trained so he was kind of old school so when you went to Ian's class it was terrifying I mean there was different levels he taught the advanced and I think there was an intermediate group and then there was someone else who took the beginners but to get to the advanced group you had to be really good and he had this other thing called the London Fusion Orchestra that they were the ones who went out and did the gig so everybody wanted to get into the London Fusion Orchestra and so it was good because you could see a progression route and there was a healthy competition but it was also quite difficult for me as a young woman because it was all boys and it was very much they didn't really want a girl to come and join in and how did that actually manifest were they mean to you or they didn't you know how did you find how did you find space within that world it was weird because I went to school in Island and I went to Island Green it was super rough and I ended up hanging out with the boys the girls in that particular school were just really not very they were quite I don't want to use a bad word but it's spiteful put it that way and I've got loads of women for you I'm not anti-women do you know what I mean but those at all but they were just like you know if you weren't into kind of like hair and makeup which I clearly am now but like but if you weren't into that sort of like only thing you were into if you were into playing a piano or saxophone or bit of jazz me then it's like not included in that set of people so hang out with the boys so I thought go into weekend arts college be okay because I'm used to hanging out with the boys but it was very much like they'd have a really good piano player before I got the chair and then he left and they were a bit like oh no it's a girl you know they didn't really they didn't really want me there and they made it really really obvious and Ian wasn't like you know saying come on embrace the girl she's just one of us she's a musician it was like well you've got to you've got to prove it to us as well he was just as bad really so yeah it was terrifying that does sound terrifying was that helpful in some ways did it make you have to up your game did you have to work really hard I think so in one of the interviews I read that you mentioned something that he'd said to you where he'd come over to you and sort of said you don't know what you're doing Nicky you've got to do it with the voice and then you said well I went home and made sure that I knew what I was doing next week absolutely yeah he come up he come up I was playing and I didn't know what I was doing because also he wasn't very clear he didn't say to me like these are the chords you need to play he didn't study harmony with Ian he expected you to go and do that on your own with your teacher we studied musicians playing being a band and all of the other things that you don't get from practicing in a room in your room on your own so yeah he come up and he said to me you don't know what you're bloody doing do you and I was like oh that's awful I don't want to ever hear that again so I went off and I made sure next week I knew exactly what I was doing and you know in one sense that there's something appropriate about that because the jazz kind of commitment is rigour isn't it it really is practice it's hard work you can't just fake it or hope that you'll be good or mess around tell me about the relative relationship between form and playing songs that you know and standards or learning about form and improvisation how did he deal with that were they teaching you to improvise at the same time no it was yes and no so it wasn't like Ian's classes weren't very prescriptive he wouldn't do chalk and talk he didn't give any handouts it was all very practical there are many students that are here and I think in my group workshops I tend to do the same thing I just want us to play and practice as a rehearsal as professional musicians but he didn't let you solo all the time so when you got that solo that was your moment and you needed to grasp it otherwise you might not get to solo again for the rest of the class so it was quite competitive in that sense you had to say something you had to say something meaningful musically within the space that you were given and so that's where the pressure came did he play with you? and that must have been quite exciting how do you rate him when you think about him as a musician how do you rate him as a musician and a composer it's awesome some of the stuff that Ian did was very much in the vein of Miles and he loved Miles so much that he was purely based his whole sound off of Miles the biggest fan of Miles but with that came a lot of the philosophy that he'd studied when I was on the road with Miles a lot of talking to Miles so he brought that in and so you'd get nuggets of lived experience and lived empirical wisdom as opposed to somebody saying this is what Coltrane said at some point he's like I was on the road with Miles and Miles told me this that comes with a certain amount of authority what's interesting about that as well is I mean at different times it's been different but there has historically been this thing within jazz some people refer to it as the jazz police the idea that only certain things are meant to be jazz and if you deviate from that you have betrayed the spirit of jazz but it sounds like with Ian Carr one of the things I came to Ian Carr because I wasn't a real I didn't know a great deal about jazz but I knew about dance music but the connection there was the fusion was the band like nucleus was this quite funky stuff which clearly was influenced by what Miles Davis had done which is kind of leave traditional jazz behind at a certain point in the 70s and for a while that was quite potent and quite popular but it didn't kind of it didn't seem to lead anywhere in one sense it was quite a move which was controversial up to a point in the jazz world because that did you have a feeling about that? Yeah I mean I was one point when I said to him I really want to get my straight ahead playing together he's like well then don't come here he said I'm not going to do that stuff here it was really clear and he said look we're just going to we're going to play contemporary music so we'd learn weather report tunes and we'd learn his tunes I mean the most kind of straight ahead we'd probably do is like Horace Silver you know and he's like he said Miles doesn't even want to play all blues why should we play all blues and that was a round of time that Miles had released with Marcus Miller producing which is a whole another thing and obviously after on the corner and then moving towards two to two and all of this kind of deviation from the norm tell me about that in terms of you know how you negotiated that world as you moved out of the class and started to because at what point did you become or did you think of yourself as a professional musician? I started I took a sort of gap year but I say I took a sort of gap year because I come from a very working class family so I wasn't even really aware of the options that were available to me I actually applied to go here and I got a place I should have come here they didn't have a piano at the time oh yeah and well my loss too because it's a great place and reopen minded and thank you for having me I meant to say that it's such a pleasure honestly and you can play this piano anytime I'll be back tomorrow so you applied here to do music and I came and there was this whole ethnomusicology day and I came to a few of the open days for different things and I was this close to coming because I was studying a little bit of sitar at the Center for Young Musicians as well and there was a little bit of a time when I thought maybe I should not look at the piano a bit worldy and I started becoming more in touch and in tune with my Asian roots as well and I thought do I need to explore that a bit more and I still feel actually as an artist a bit more and this would have been the perfect place but it's never too late right I'll sign up for next September I'll see you in a couple of months I was on this kind of gap year but it was kind of like a gap year that happened just because I got into certain places but then didn't go and then I went to Goldsmiths doing a foundation degree but I didn't really know what it was I just wanted to study jazz so I ended up going to loads of different gigs loads of different workshops that I could find any jazz musician that came over to Ronnie's I was like I need to get a lesson and back in the day it was a bit more informal loads of people would like Chuchu Valdes from Irokeris to have a piano lesson in the room above Ronnie Scott's there was a piano up there and he would give me lessons people would that's kind of the culture people would just have this whole exchange of ideas and it wasn't like they were necessarily even charging for lessons and it was a real culture of that happening I mean a sort of trans-Atlantic community really even with like all of the Warriors lot and the Marsalis brothers and they were all like really close friends that you know there was there wasn't social media so the social side of it became who you there was a lot of hanging out there was a lot of spending time at Ronnie's right that's how you got your stuff together that was my university I always say Ronnie's was my uni you know which is a great place to study really well absolutely yeah you've mentioned a few times about Irokeri and I just wonder if you you know I feel like I want to get you to play again but I just wonder if there's something along those lines you mentioned that you learnt the clave from I mean I'm quite ignorant about music but the sort of structure of Afro-Cuban music was something that was quite important to you is that? Yeah I lived in Cuba for six months so yeah that was a lot of fun were you chasing the Cuban music a little bit yeah but yeah I don't know if it's I'm not really prepared anything with a clave in it I want you to play something but we'll find a way to weave that in so tell me about so you're in the band at the moment I think with people that you were at that school with at that Ian Carr a Mark and Michael? Yeah they were there before me? They were there before you so they're older and it's called Ultimatum? Infinitum Infinitum I'm sorry Mark and Michael Mondaysie two incredible musicians we're going to be on telly in a couple of weeks if you want to watch that BBC Young Jazz musician musical director again this year and Mark and Michael in that band so I met Mark actually met Mark at my school because at Islington Sixth form we had four weeks it was Julian Joseph, Mark Mondaysie Wayne Bachelor and John Toussaint came into the school every single week for four weeks and I met Mark when I was 16 and I met his brother around the same sort of time and played some stuff to them and they were like oh we need to hang so one of the first pieces I wrote for that particular line up that wasn't actually wasn't Mark it was Kieffler Blanc was in the band at the time from Tack Hill Sugar Hill was called Dance of the Two Small Bears I could play that one if you want it's got a bit of a story to it though would you like to hear the story you're sitting comfortably then I'll begin so once upon a time there were two bears in a forest as a man bear and a woman bear stay with me the man bear he sees the woman bear and he wants to dance with her so he goes over to her to ask her to dance and he says he's going over there he remembers he can't do that because he's a bear bears don't talk then he remembers there's a language a bear language which actually you can still communicate so he starts to dance which means in bear language would you like to dance in bear language means yes he's a tiny little bear she's quite a big statuistic bear but he doesn't care he's all about the inner bear he's like oh this is great she's a great big bear he's a open minded guy he does the washing up modern guy and romantic it's like a figment of someone's imagination I don't know anyway so he changes his dance steps to fit with hers and you'll hear this in the piece big bear little bear and then they fall in love that's it and when I was 19 when I wrote this piece I thought to myself that's it and that's how it ends and then I realised that actually maybe life and relationships it's not always like that sometimes the kids they go to university and spend all your money but they don't go to lectures don't say that sometimes they split up sometimes they argue but what is important about this piece is what I learn from when I became a professional musician still not fully answered that question but what I learn is that life doesn't always work out as you want sometimes it does but what I do realise is when you perform the audience's energy really has an effect on the improviser so we'll see at the end of this piece what happened to the bears because it's different every time so it's up to you if there's a happy ending or a sad ending a happy ending or a sad ending I couldn't quite be sure I can never vote happy or sad ending happy sad you may have felt like a long successful marriage where you're never quite sure do you have a happy marriage or a sad marriage but you're still together you were 19 when you wrote that to return to an earlier question were you a professional musician at the time when you wrote that I was doing gigs like I used to play in a bistro in Smithfield Market it was a farringdom bistro or something like that some pizza place it's a play for pizza and a tenno I think it was piano was a bit ropey but yeah I started being a professional musician I say well weirdly enough I feel like when I was about eight or nine I played in a pub in near Exmouth Market pubs used to have pianos it was a regular thing and there was a guy who just finished his set and then I said oh can I play I played like Adelwires or something it sounded a music piece and he took a glass around so I could buy myself a packet of crisps and I had family I wasn't going out to make money for the crisps the most important thing about that someone said to me now you've received money for playing you're a professional so I think I considered myself as a professional from then that makes sense it was the validation I needed because I've been practicing in my room up until that time and clearly you've made such a commitment to this that it was starting to appear that that's what you were going to do with your life wasn't it? well that was when I was seven playing in the pub a little bit later on then yeah a little bit later on I said the first kind of break through I had I was doing a few other little gigs on the scene when I was like doing my A levels and stuff and then I went to the jazz cafe in Camden when I was 18 and there was a jam session using musicians Lonnie Plaxico from the M-Base Collective Steve Williamson Courtney Pine and the piano player who was due to sit in at the time had had a fit of nerves and so he'd left the building and basically the guy who was running the jam session Gary Crosby from Tomorrow's Warrers he said if anybody out there want to come and sit in and play the piano our piano players had a fit of nerves you have to be able to cut it and that terrified me I was like oh well done about that I don't know if I can do that so my mates were like I think you were there I don't know yeah my sixth one friend a couple of mates were like was he egging you on? so I actually did they were about to stop playing and then the piano player he had quite tall tucked him on the shoulder I said do you mind if I the house piano player who were just going to cover for the guy who didn't do it I said do you mind if I sit in and that's fine no problem he looked at me like are you sure you're a girl like a little bit like you know and it was quite unusual so I sat in and as we were playing playing like a blues I think we played like I think we played like Billy's Bounce I went a bit wrong there but anyway but I think we played Billy's Bounce and Courtney Pine was playing and it was quite a fast tempo and all of that and I was being a bit roasted but when it comes to my solo Courtney was looking at me over these little glasses shades like round like that he was looking at me over these glasses and I was terrified I thought he's going to tell me to give up 100% he's going to tell me to give up and everyone was like give me a round of applause I was like ok novelty factor they don't see many girls getting up there you know not confident at all really sort of full of self doubt as you are when you're a teenager as you can be as a musician and anyway I was about to leave the venue after this event after the jam session he came and tapped me on the shoulder and he said Courtney wants the word of you in the dressing room so I went to the dressing room I thought he's definitely going to tell me to give up and as I went to the dressing room he basically asked me he said where are you coming from and I thought is that musically is that ethnically what a question and I was like islington and he took my number and a couple of months later he called me to and I stepped in for Beggy Mselechu fantastic South African pianist who's no longer with us sadly great album on blue note of his called Timelessness check that out if you aren't aware see some people nodding they know about people know about Beggy in this room he's a good crowd they got me to depth for Beggy and then after that Beggy went and done his own thing that album included and I was in the band for about three years it was great played to big audiences did you play at Liverpool University I actually think we might have done because I was a student there and I remember seeing Courtney there he was at the front of the work near Casper what I remember was Courtney came on and played a couple of choruses and then he just went for it and he really was the most overwhelming experience especially for a non-jazz person I found it quite terrifying in a way that stayed with me all that time I can't remember who was playing the piano maybe it was you, wicked because I did promise we'd get to this so that's the kind of cult train inspired end of jazz but for the hip-hop crowd I can see we've got quite a hip-hop crowd in tell me about the roots how did you manage to join the roots how did that happen? it was a time when there was a lot of this transatlantic thing would happen when people would just come and hang out on the radio some of the roots they would always spend quite a lot of time in London doing gigs and stuff well the roots were here actually they were living here for a bit so it was a mutual friend of ours Anthony Tidd from quite sane played in Steve Coleman's bass player now he was like introducing me to them and they were like yeah we want Nicky to be in the band so I was in the band for probably about a year maybe two years but they wanted me to carry on and I was like I want to play jazz we did Montreux Jazz Festival it's actually online somewhere the roots played at Montreux Jazz Festival I did that gig with them in 94 that's a long time ago isn't it time flyer and then upstairs Aldi and Miola was playing and I really enjoyed the gig but I remember thinking it just wasn't challenging me musically there's one tune called Dat Scat which I love and don't give me what I love hip-hop but Dat Scat goes like this I can see it's not using all of your many talents so yeah another time the thing is when you've got the drums you've got the bass you've got an amazing I mean Tariq, Black Thought those of you who don't know the roots can check them out and they played such an important part if you go to a roots gig they will give you a potted history of hip-hop from the beginning to the end every time can you just what's the piano bit impressive to you it's a long time ago man I was listening to it today trying to pick out the piano bit next time I will have that ready for you it's still a nice so that was your alternative life where you could have been a kind of American hip-hop superstar I could be a ride at Universal the most surreal moment because these were my mates and I did I absolutely loved playing with the roots I respect for them love Questlove, love those guys and what was brilliant is that they didn't there wasn't many people actually anybody really using live instruments that was a big thing to the live band because I was playing with Kefla Blanc which gave my trio at the time a different kind of hip-hop broke a beats orientated kind of sound all of my stuff I'd write would be quite jagged like it's kind of like quite spiky angular kind of music and Kefla put some kind of hip-hop beats behind that and even though it was like jazz but hip-hop so it kind of gave my stuff a new kind a different kind of sound but what was my point is so even though I loved all of that stuff I really also wanted to continue flourishing and getting my chops together and doing all of that and I never saw it as something that was separate from... I was going to say sorry I lost my train of thought but most of the real moment was when I went to Universal and there's a ride and the routes are a hologram in a ride so there's a whole ride and it's like you could have been a hologram I could have been a hologram I could have been a contender then this brings us on to the kind of negotiating the world of jazz in two ways really and you can take it however whichever way feels like has been and been perceived to be something which is quite white quite male you know quite sort of upper class in a way in England has become but you're not that so how did you sort of negotiate your way through that and the other sort of side of that is also how do you build a career, how do you pay the bills because jazz has always been a somewhat of a minority pursuit and a niche I have representation well yeah obviously you're part of the manager make sure you get what you need but tell me about how you negotiated through that world of British jazz and found your space within it both sort of economically and in terms of identity yeah that's a big question I know there's a lot there which bit you want me to answer first I don't know whatever sort of strikes you I guess I never wanted the fact that I'm a woman to get in the way of me being a jazz musician because and I never wanted, I don't just identify with music that's played by women either that's also a really weird well you say that but people come up to you and they'll say have you heard of Patrice Russian I'm like yeah she's absolutely amazing but I've also heard of McCoy Tyner who happens to be a bloke so it's really weird that even now people's perception is that if you're a woman in jazz there's this lineage of women in jazz people are like oh I really love Alice Coltrane I'm like yeah I do too but I also love Hermeto it's strange so I've always found there's lots of prejudice and up until recently I think it was one of the few careers where people hasn't really spoken about women in jazz and now people have the conversations that is changing you think yeah it's definitely changing and I'm really happy about that there's a special diversity in British jazz now as well the musicians we talked about many of the musicians you mentioned were black it was a relatively small part of the jazz scene in fact it was the lineage of the jazz warriors into Caerly Pine they all knew each other it's not that they were militant but they were very aware that they were fighting for space for black musicians and that seems to have paid off in some ways because now the British jazz scene I mean let's not get confused because there was also loose tubes that were really open minded and come up at the same time so loose tubes and warriors but the old guard before that that held all of the positions of power held all the keys to the gigs they weren't letting any of the young black guys in at the time so the warriors was all about basically they were like well you're not letting us play so we'll have to create our own places to play and actually that is what created the scene that we have today so the shoulders that we stand on are the shoulders of the jazz warriors and also loose tubes as well we've been very open minded as well so we mustn't forget that their contemporaries were not of that mentality so that generation they had a lot of doors to push through but I think it's always like that with art there's always going to be the gatekeepers that don't want anything new coming through I mean you had steam down here the other day a lot of people criticised steam down playing straight ahead straight ahead is almost 100 years old as well I mean not that I love straight ahead but there's room for steam down too Wayne had a really interesting answer to that which I hadn't really considered where he said that we're pulling from traditions which are both African American traditions and the Caribbean and West Africa and it's not like that in America it was almost implying that the American jazz language was slightly more limited than the diasporate language that's available to the black musician in Britain who's pulling from a wider pallor All art in London, Birmingham Manchester all of the places where you have a more diverse population your music is going to reflect your heritage and it's going to reflect your life experience it ought to if you're being authentic to your own self and your own art your art should reflect your life and so therefore because we have more mixing going on and we're less segregated in America than America it's pretty much more of a melting pot of different sounds, different cultural influences and plus in London specifically we have a certain our own thing going on as well we do kind of do I should just say that there will be time for some audience questions so I will be getting to you don't worry, there's a few more things I want to hear from Nicky and perhaps play another something but let's get on, you are now yourself a teacher aren't you you're following in this tradition that you've picked up from Ian you obviously feel that you're not just doing it to pay the bills you're doing it because you've got some kind of I love teaching some of my students are here, I've got to say that I see you tell it, how did you get into it you're associated with a variety of different teaching outlets at the moment I've been lecturing at Leeds Conservatoire for a year now so I'm a principal lecturer there which is lovely in academic we're a bit cockney though the best kind that's really great because I just get to explore jazz for like all the time I'm there it's so creative I'm absolutely loving loving that and I love hanging I love hanging around with young people I love working with young people as well because you get the energy and the creativity and then it challenges your thinking and it refreshes my passion for the music because I'm like oh you've not heard this man we've got to play this tune or you've got to hear this and it keeps that energy alive for me as well sometimes jazz music you can get a bit like stuck in your ways and not be challenged but I've always taught I've always taught it's always been a simultaneous thing for me there's something about the playing and the teaching informally but also in these other spaces which is part because there's something about being a jazz musician which seems built in that you need to keep I know we all should be learning all the time but presumably some musicians' careers are about a little bit like you demonstrated with the roots repeating yourself over and over again in bigger and bigger venues which is not really what jazz is like you're pushing yourself in different directions I think there's always been there's a brilliant zillion staying that says if you bring someone up a step then you can move up a step yourself I've always had this philosophy of actually passing it on because that nourishes me like I said the creative side of me if I'm passing it on I'm exploring different ideas as well and when you get feedback and other young people bringing stuff to the class so then you're being fed creatively as well but also I'm really keen on not teaching in a way that jazz is often taught which is very much from a harmony perspective harmony is great and it's really super important but the most of the academic institutions focus primarily on harmony and not necessarily on the other things that make you attracted to the music the interplay between musicians the rhythm phrasing all of those things it's pretty much all like mostly harmony so whenever I've been teaching in Camden for 26, 27 years I started my Saturday morning course there I think 27 years ago and the heads of music at Camden at the time said what would you like to do and I said I want to have a jazz band and lots of great musicians have passed through my doors through going to that class and I think because I've always just treated everybody like you're going to be a professional musician but we're a bit more love than Ian did because he was from tougher times as you said imagine you wouldn't have to do the army and be shouted at by a sergeant major maybe that's but what he did inspire me by our teachers to really just see everybody as individuals too and take everybody seriously and you know those classes are serious for me because you know that's the time of the week that those young people have a chance to really do what they love and I thought it's a great honour to be able to facilitate that and get them to where they want to be and I find great pleasure in that and it's very rewarding You've got these videos on YouTube I highly recommend Search for Nicky O on YouTube and there's these videos explaining some hints and tricks about improvisation Was that something, was that a lockdown thing? I refuse to do anything in lockdown that was like I didn't want to be filmed playing I didn't want to do any live kind of all of those things but music for youth approached me to do some tutorials like mini sort of like my top tips for it So I thought you know what actually all these young people these kids are locked up and not being able to go out would be great if they could be guided in a certain way so for them I did it And the feedback on there have you read the comments you should they're so sweet and they say what a beautiful teacher and how nice that you're so open and I think there's a real sense that you're more like them than they would imagine a teacher would be Well that's really nice, I don't usually read comments because people might mean things to them No I recommend that you do, they're really sweet So bring us up to date a little bit you're working on a project which has the wonderful name of Nucleus which is of course the great fusion band that Ian Carr formed which is just you know magnificent, is it it's called Nucleus, is it a reference to that in particular? What is the Nucleus project tell us about that So the National Youth Jazz Orchestra commissioned me to write a new piece for them and they're sounding really great like I heard them playing with Hermeter Pasquale at the Barbican recently, I was absolutely blown away, they're killing it some great musicians in there, oh my gosh there's a piano player in there called Andrew Chen absolutely, he's amazing he's anyway, so I digress but they've commissioned me to write a piece for them which is going to be premiered next year and I was thinking about you know education Nigel used to be not as open minded as WAC there was like WAC and Nigel so Ian's class and Nigel and Nigel is where you got your sight reading together but it was all blokes in a different way, like Ian's class was all boys but these guys were like the worst side of male energy I'm sure nobody in this room possesses that energy right but they were the worst side so they really really didn't make me feel comfortable I went to two sessions and then the main guy at the time come up to me a bit like Ian come up to me and say something he goes not bad for a girl the main guy so it made me feel really uncomfortable so when they first asked me to write a piece I was a bit like oh man I don't know but then we had a really long chat about diverse and they're so open now they've changed their style they're fantastic they really are brilliant and they've really gone out of their way to try and be as inclusive as possible there's some amazing young women coming out of their Asher Parkinson Emma Rawrich who's an amazing saxophonist so they've got like this is brilliant so I'm looking forward to working with them next year because they're great musicians and the piece Nucleus I thought it's got to be linked to Ian because there was this whole WAC and Nigel full circle right so the piece starts off with a requiem for Ian because he was one of my mentors and I miss him dearly he would have been 19 next year and I'll be 50 next year so we would have had a big old party but he's not around so this is the way I can celebrate him so there's a requiem and then are you moving through all the styles is there going to be some nice fusion bits in there as well it's all pretty it's all through composed with some sections for improvising so it's not like an AABA piece that's just big band scored it's all very much orchestrated through composed and I also rearranged for Nigel a piece that I wrote in 97 called Speech Mic Exploration and that project was based on a poem so I'm glad we got a poet in the house it was a poem that I wrote called Speech Mic Exploration that I got different friends of mine at the time to translate it into their relative languages so Polish I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly Italian Urdu and Mandarin and I filmed them and have their faces projected onto the back of the wall and like Hermeter Pasquale who's one of my influences he puts a lot of music to speech you probably see these things on Instagram it all comes out of Hermeto all of it comes out of Hermeto so if he's talking he'll harmonise the speech and I was very interested in that so I did that 97 and the whole piece comes out of the harmonised speech so every single movement has got a different phrase that comes out of the harmonised speech and the poem is Speech Mic Exploration is the creation of all in every nation through word art or motion it's still a musical potion the positivity of this creativity is to communicate with it the spiritual meaning of justice and equality wow can't wait where can we see that where and when can we see that that is going to be in 2023 dates yet to be confirmed so if you go to my Instagram or Facebook or Twitter I think I'm Nicky Piano yo on Twitter then I'll let you guys know about it I'd love to see you there it's going to be hench one more thing you mentioned to me that you've got a gig coming up at the vortex a different kind of thing vortex is this wonderful little you've been to vortex haven't you this legendary really a couple of times but it was set up by a guy who was a black cab driver who was a jazz nut and it's still staffed by volunteers primarily isn't it it's a brilliant space and it's just an incredible it's been refurbed actually did you know that I went halfway through the refurb and you had to sit downstairs while they were redoing it upstairs so what are you going to be doing there well at the time when I was going to weekends arts college I had a real passion also for free jazz ah yeah you could get with it could you I was so into it and it wasn't hip at all it was just like I'd be on my bike cycling around and go to these really obscure places there'd be like a little leaflet that was called jazz in London it was an A4 size of piece of paper and it would fold into like you know quarters and you'd get that from raised jazz shop or mulch jazz in King's Cross great jazz record shop right so you get this and you see what's going on and I'd be like oh that looks really obscure definitely going to go to that in the back room of a back room behind the back room of a pub upstairs like five floors someone playing a dustbin lid a hope pipe definitely and it would be like maybe four people in the audience eight people on stage you know but um that's real jazz properly I miss those days man I miss those days I was like you know because it was so pure I was like that at Vortex I saw someone you know who was tap dancer came along and just joined I don't know anyway sorry I interrupted you so free jazz free jazz so I'd go and hear Lowell Coxill Keith Tipit solo piano I mean you know Barbican would sell out with those guys now but it's like yeah just random random free jazz guys and one of the bass players that I connected with was a guy called Paul Rogers who's amazing and we hung out a lot we used to just play free he'd just come over and play free and um yeah he was really really dedicated to improvising and really dedicated to playing free and has a super diligent practice routine I mean this cat would practice maybe eight hours a day I think he still does now he lives in France he doesn't live in London anymore much to it's our loss I'm afraid because he's brilliant but he is over here in January so we are going to reconnect I haven't seen him since I was about maybe 18-19 he's been living in France at that time so I put together a project with him Mark Sanders and the incredible Evan Parker oh wow 20th of January 2023 it's a way to kick off my 50th cycle around the side so we know the date have you any idea what's going to be played it's free man it's free jazz for those of us who are musically illiterate I very much am what do we mean by free what's it free of free of any kind of restraints in the sense of no chord chart no melody no no one's in control no one's in charge no one's in control but no one's in charge there's no leader as such you can take an idea and you can extemporise over that idea and it might become a group extemporisation where everybody's in playing from that idea someone might then decide to go against that idea and it's up to you because you have free will freedom whether you choose to then go along with their change or you keep to your own and it's all about feeling it's all about how you engage with an instrument but more importantly it's about the technique different techniques you can use the insides of the piano you can use all different textures you can really explore and every time I've played free it's obviously different but I learn something about myself as a musician because you have to really search within yourself in order to connect with the musicality that's there and you have to be completely genuine to the moment because you can't just sit behind a bunch of licks that you've prepared, semi-prepared or you've played a dozen times nowhere to hide especially with those guys they take no prisoners it's a great experience, intense sounds incredibly intense always on the edge of complete chaos that's the danger and that's the thrill if you listen to Bitches Brew Miles Davis' album that's a great example of free jazz and now people are like oh can I get a score for that and it's just like that nobody knew what was going to happen that's where I did love the roots to be honest because they would come out with stuff like with jam and with right stuff coming out of a jam session just playing together that's where they're jazz musicians I don't see a line between jazz and hip-hop in that sense because it's coming from the same sensibility I think so Nicky I wonder if you would play us something whatever strikes you whatever you want us to hear whatever you want to say to us I think I'm going to play, I'm going to we've played a song about healing and I've played another one about love I think I'm going to play something that I wrote I wrote this in Snape Moulton I know Snape so well my grandmother lived in Alborough and I saw some wonderful music at Snape it's such a beautiful haunting place isn't it it's fantastic you're lucky to have your nan live in there my nan lived in St John's Street quite nice nowadays it is I was driving down to this artist in residence the artist in residence residency in Snape and I spoke to my great auntie who was 87 at the time and she had lost a grown-up son already and then she told me that her other son had been diagnosed with a terminal illness which is obviously tragic so I arrived to the studio and I was thinking I wanted to write and I'm pretty much crying on the inside and professionals I'm like yeah it's lovely here at the residence you go into the room and I just felt this grief overcome and I just sat at a piano and this came out in one go her name was Ivy and as I looked out the window in the studio there was all this elderflower on the tree so this place is called elderflower and Ivy and it's about grieving in the summer time thank you so much Nicky and thank you for sharing it is a way of sharing your emotions with the world isn't it I can feel it we've got some time for some questions from you so please do not feel shy put your hand up and ask a question we've got a mic somewhere so is there anything that you'd like to say it could be more of a comment than a question it doesn't have to be a question it could be a wrap it could be a wrap over here just use the microphone thank you what is left for you to feel that you need to do it sounds like you've come so far but what would you in the next 10 years 20 years where would you like to be with your music oh wow that's a big question yeah I still feel I still feel like I'm really just on the beginning of a journey so even though I think my journey started when I was relatively young and I've been doing it for pretty solid quite a few years I definitely always feel like I'm learning I still feel like I have lots to learn about the jazz idiom I love composing ideally I would love to be doing even more writing so this piece that I write written for Nigel has really given me so much the whole process has given me a lot of joy and I realise how much I love composing sometimes composing can be difficult actually a piece like this just came out all in one but sometimes you've really got to keep chipping away at the block every day and sometimes it feels like it's a week and you've only written one bar even though you've been working 12 hours a day but I even enjoy that process to be honest the luxury of thinking time I would like to award myself the luxury of thinking time a bit more and open up my artistic space so that more of this can flow through me nice oh yeah I'm definitely always interested in writing for film so hopefully that will come about at some point thank you thank you so much the last piece was amazing I think all of us we did feel the emotions of the it was really lovely I don't know is it possible but can you describe the feelings with words of the last piece because I did imagine all the ups and downs with the music and going down so if it is possible to just give us a description of the journey of the piece itself yeah so the first part of the piece is I deliberately wrote the voicings on the piano this bit so the first chord is C it's a C major chord but without the third and it's got the 9 I'll order 2 really because there's no 7 in there and it's really clean yeah C is the first note we really learn on any instrument so it felt to me that's a place of innocence and then it ends up being in a relative minor which is a place that is traditionally of sadness so I suppose if I was to analyse it it's the place of purity and innocence going into somewhere quite dark which is where you are when you're grieving and like a lot of my pieces because it's a jazz piece the end bit was improvised and today when I ended it I ended it in different ways but today I ended it on just 2 As here because to me that really felt very final when you're grieving sometimes grieving is never really final but somebody you lost their life is final so it needed to end like a really clean ending to get closure I guess today it felt when I played that I experienced grieving when I was playing it I have to get into a zone for me it's like a meditation in order to play it from an artistically genuine place that hopefully will move you otherwise if you're just playing the notes it won't move you if you haven't got the intention the intention behind the note is what makes it music so today it felt like as I went through that grieving process that that person was gone and there was closure sometimes it doesn't feel like that the grieving is going on long after I've played it so for me it's always cathartic and hopefully you also feel some release with audience that's what art should be about some brilliant description thank you thank you thank you really enjoyed today's talk and the performance a couple of thoughts when you were having your lessons at Running Scots was there any stand out lesson that someone passed on to you as a more mature performer that you could pass on to us and is there any advice you give your students that you always give the students that might boost their confidence coming from a woman who also plays music in a very male world I have come to realise it is very gendered and sometimes you're sitting there surrounded by other guys who appear to be more confident than we may be students about this is how you can boost your own confidence any advice you could pass on to us I don't know if there's one specific answer I think anytime I teach it's always very bespoke I like to get to know the person and find out how they tick and basically try to work through any challenges they have and if confidence it comes from different places sometimes it comes from the physical, technical ability to do something or it comes from having overcome a challenge so I think sometimes but then also to break it down and not feel that if you can't do something that that's a reflection of your musicality anything can be practised literally I was learning this Barry Harris thing at the beginning of the week it's his thing because I don't want to bore you but Barry Harris's beautiful exercises it's such a gorgeous thing but it's quite fiddly on the piano so it's like going up root and then second and then third of a major chord then it goes up to the two of minor third above back to one two then a minor third above anyway I couldn't do that at the beginning of the week and I thought to myself look these are the kind of things I would set my student I'm going to give myself a week to get that in every key and by the end of the week I did it because every single day I practised it and I thought am I practising what I preach I'm telling my students do it every day and it's going to get easier when was the last time you did something that you found but now I'm confident I'm playing it in a room of people right after a week so it's giving me a boost so we can all do that regardless of what if that's music or anything it's repetition just put in in the time and then not giving ourselves a big beating ourselves up if we can't do it as fast as Casper Casper sit round here and he's like I can rinse that but like we compare ourselves to the day before and once you compare yourself to yourself yesterday and if you've moved on a bit that's great and just keep on with that energy we're all on our own path that doesn't mean that if you hear a great piano play you shouldn't try and get to where they're at but do it in your own time otherwise we can sometimes just get in our own way and then we just end up having stumbling blocks and then we just don't achieve anything so be kind to yourself I know it's one of the crazy italic writing on Instagram I mean you know I was saying that before them did that work? it did work didn't it I feel like that as well you are a good teacher I bless you hi Nicky thank you so much for the beautiful playing I must be honest this is a calling response when you mentioned that I kind of it yanked the South Africaners out of me even though I'm afraid in asking this question but I just wanted to get a sense from you given that you've interacted at that level of musicianship in the history of of London Jazz history I mean I just came to contact the music your music very recently and it's very honest by the way I enjoy it as I'm sitting here but with for example Bighimsyllegw being here and going back around the 1990s I think late 2000s he went and he put a band together and he released one album and they came straight back to the UK because South Africa was not working out for him based on on that I guess understanding what would you say about the London circuit Jazz circuit that made him feel like he couldn't go back home after he had been here for so long during exile That's interesting because I knew Beggy pretty well and there was a whole wave of fantastic South African musicians that came here in the 80s or late 80s early 90s that really had an amazing effect on the British Jazz scene at the time and this is I've taught in my classes in my workshops I tried to keep that that notion of life This is after the blue notes then another generation No no no it was around that time so there was like Oh gosh yeah incredible Brian Abraham's Mervyn Africa Beggymsyllegw the British Jazz musicians absolutely loved all of the South Africa sound and the knowledge that these guys were bringing was a real blend I mean I know Django Bates very inspired by South African Jazz brings a lot of that flavour even now into his playing and his writing so there's been a legacy they've definitely left their mark I think the open mindedness at the time in the 80s and 90s of everybody just we're all in London together we're going to make music together I think maybe that's what attracted Beggy here that's why he came back and loved Eugene Schief was a big part of that great percussionist he also was as an audience the audience loved him too he had great gigs and he was doing really well I don't know if that answers your question I mean Beggy had a really really intense manager who got him the blue note too Russell Herman so I think there were opportunities for him here and in New York, I mean that album he's got Abby Lincoln on there Marvin Smith who else escapes me now I think it's Joe Henderson on that album it's like the line up it's absolutely incredible it's a shame Beggy passed because he'd been known as even more now as one of the greats I mean I think he could have lived anywhere and succeeded to be honest there was, you know, blue note isn't everywhere so he went to America and it's a shame he passed away I'd love to have heard him again now We've got time for maybe one or two more Yes, we'll come to you second Thank you for your performance I just wonder in terms of your writing the new piece of art because you mentioned like sometimes the emotion triggers you or inspires you to create it, a new one so I just wondering at that moment how do you balance the emotional self and the critical self or let's say the more logical one because the composition needs to be like more logical or I don't know if I make sense No no you make a total sense actually and for me it's I don't really see a separation to a degree so when I'm composing because I'm self-taught as a composer I didn't study composing formally so under ranging and all of that I literally just go with my ear and my ear is dictated by what I feel so if I'm feeling like a melody needs to go to the certain note I will have to find the note that resonates to get my message across whatever that feeling is it's a gut reaction it's exhausting really as a process because everything's much more emotional than cerebral not to say in cerebral work can't be exhausting but it's I have to really be in touch and in tune with what I'm feeling to write because then it feels like it's coming from the place where the message is coming to me music is a gift from above and I'm just a vessel for me to deliver that message then I have to be true to what I'm feeling because then the message is coming through in the right way you know and that's not to say that there's not of value in using you know doing something that's very academic and cerebral and sitting there thinking okay if I use this bunch of notes and give a counterpoint here or I put this in the flu and I put this in the clarinets and I put this in the bass that it's going to have this kind of texture and through empirical knowledge and also listening to stuff the sort of texture I want to have you know obviously there are certain devices that you're going to go to if you think this is going to get that result but it's still I've got to cross reference it to my spirit all the time so it's like mind, body, spirit working in tandem Yeah, pleasure to see you, Nicky and listen to your music as everybody mentions very emotional your playing I'd like to ask you about what's your experience of classical music and what do you think the connection between jazz and classical because sometimes it always feels like it's such separate thing even if you look at all of the classical approach versus jazz approach and almost like two different worlds but if you think back for example to Bach and all the Baroque era they were all improvisers they used to write for every individual like even people the pieces and what do you think in terms of the using different approaches like cross genres and especially in the modern age where you have a lot of contemporary classical composers they explore a lot of improvisational stuff for example, yeah, what's your opinion on that? Yeah, it's a really interesting question and I sometimes wrestle with the answer because something Barry Harris said the other day was that jazz is actually the extension of classical music that classical music kind of stopped and then jazz just didn't stop but jazz continues the pushing the music forward for me there's no difference in the approach of way short of harmony or the way he approaches rhythm and melody that's so unique and so pushing melody forward not jazz melody or classical melody but melody, the concept of melody and harmony and I don't know I didn't at the time at the time when jazz was called jazz was a time when it was extremely segregated black and white in America and they would use jazz as derogatory word for the music that African Americans were creating and so why is jazz not just called an extension of classical music is there some racist agenda that it can't be validated as being superior like it's a rebel art music that's a question I'm putting out there to me, why is there this division because it takes just as much creativity to write a jazz piece as it does to write a classical piece Bach would say was an improviser Scriabin, if you listen to Scriabin he's harmonies, it's pure jazz you know, Chopin the harmonies, it's jazz so why is it all of a sudden there's this division yes there's improvisation but you know it's not being awarded the same financial status as classical music and why is that is it because it's music of a black origin well there's an image isn't there there's an image of the drug the drug taking, you know you only got to watch the film round midnight with Texter Gorda it's a great film but it's at the time it was very controversial because it was like saying all jazz musicians are drug addicts and we're not you know mostly introducing and vegan cheese that kind of has changed a little bit hasn't it from back in those days but yeah I mean I don't see a separation I definitely, I mean the work like Steve Coleman's doing you hear like you know Maria Schneider's orchestrations you know you hear all of these great composers and original Hermeter Pasquale to me it's their own unique voice so for me you know Hermeter Pasquale he's musical journey and message is as pure and as authentic as Chopin and if hopefully in hundreds years time 200 years time we'll listen to Duke Ellington and we'll listen to Armar Jamal with the same kind of mindset as we would have listened to Eshuba you know and yeah. Thank you, thanks for the question and your answers have been amazing Nicky as well. I wonder if we might be time for a poem as I said at the beginning a couple of our students here have been creatively responding to what's been going on tonight to Aurora has been writing a poem as we speak so I think she's going to read it to us. Good evening Nicky Good evening to everyone so I wrote this observatory piece just by observing the room and everyone title thinking through music the room is filled slowly casually everyone chatted and laughed Hannah or how poised and pretty she looked fidgeting but you'd never know Nicky there's no single word that can describe your great talent and presence on stage outwey your fingers as a brain of their own like the waves they keep ebbing and flowing and seas ceaselessly transforming from rhythm we the audience are transported I tried to connect your body to your fingers the story of peace and tranquility in your face wasn't matched with a hypnotic story of a mystery in your hands like a dandelion in the wind we the audience flew through a field to field it is a subtle it is a subtle as the autumn afternoon afternoon that this is a mixture of fading daylight and swirling lift but it doesn't wrap up warmly it isn't it isn't something that can be guessed it's a confusing mixture of love pain, romance, separation and much beyond that thinking through music your pieces I couldn't really understand the audience sits in our trying to digest the story to figure out the meaning or to figure out the ending my heart begins to raise I would say the best divorced at some point you played so beautifully so beautiful that I am honoured to have been aligned by the universe to listen to you it's a cliche I know but it's rare and beautiful to see such fiery passion and connection from every inch of your body down to your fingers it's like a it's like a an electrical current the through from the inch of your toes to your to the inch of your fingers your story is so relatable thank you for sharing your history thank you for showing us that greatness and such talent is achievable and it is just behind passion and hard work oh wow thank you that was wonderful thank you I think you've touched a nerve the emotional level in this room thank you so much that is just so beautiful and moving I've never had a poem written about me or for me so I'm equally honoured to be in your presence and I'm really really grateful that you channeled your feelings and wrote that beautiful word for me and I feel like crying again now thank you so much we've enjoyed though because it's a beautiful connection thank you so much and of course over here you can see Hannah so Hannah has painted a picture yes wow look at that I love that wow that's so cool you've inspired a lot of creative work with your creative work thank you thank you too wow I wasn't expecting to get this choked up as I have been this is how you roll isn't it this is the worst all about you you're not playing well you do play but you're not playing so it just remains really for us to just thank you so much for coming and talking to us and sharing and coming back to Soaz more because we love you I love Soaz too thank you thank you so much