Preview
SARAH SLEAN
Friday, November 7
Round Up Centre
Some musicians procure inspiration from the classics or contemporaries of their genre. Some pen prose about crazy ex-girlfriends who killed their cats. Still others are interested in carving lyrics from salacious depictions of booze and brawling. For Sarah Slean, creating music is about learning to see her subjects and weaving together a variety of unlikely influences.
"I’m really inspired by visual things – paintings, films and music that makes me see things motivates me. I find Tom Waits, Radiohead, Queen, really sombre classical music and poetry are really strongly visual to me," Slean says, her voice full of enthusiasm. "Those things trigger my imagination and make me want to write music to them."
A casual painter, Slean dabbled in the visual arts before becoming a professional performer. "I love art and I even feel music in a deeply artistic, visual way. The thing about great art is that I can hear it," she says. "I think that maybe my eyes and ears are miswired."
Slean fuses her whimsical, cabaret style with her formal training in classical music to create a poetically propelled version of pop music that paints exceptionally vivid pictures for her audience. Time constraints forced her to quit her music schooling, but as a self-professed "big school nerd," Slean says she intends to return to expand her horizons as soon as her schedule permits.
"Classical music was the first music that I loved, so it continues to inform everything that I do because it was the first language that ever entered my brain. It is the true esthetic that I measure everything up to," she says. "I think school is the greatest because I’ve met so many great players there. You just have to approach the person with the appropriate music case if you want to find somebody to play with, and it’s an amazing opportunity."
Slean says she still has "designs on writing symphonies," but admits that bringing her vintage roots into contemporary music hasn’t always been easy.
"When I went to school, people thought the idea of writing popular songs was ridiculous, but I think when classical and popular music go together you can really feel the power of what music is capable of," she says. "It is surprising that so many other people dig what I’m doing, but it’s a nice surprise."
Riding on that pleasant surprise of mainstream acceptance, Slean will begin working on her next album in the upcoming months, and she promises her new compositions will strive to be just as inventive as ever. "I love songwriting as a discipline and really love stretching the constraints of what a song can be. Every day there’s newness for me – there’s always fuel for the fire and there’s never a second that’s left for complacency." |
Copyright ©2003 FFWD. All rights reserved.