What was it like winning the Young Achiever's award?
"That was excellent . . . recognition for the work I've done so far and like wow, someone's actually taking note of what I'm doing and they think its a good thing. It's made possible this year's trip."
What country are you most looking forward to?
"All of them! Cuba, obviously just for the musical experience and it's like a whole other planet there. Paris has got a really strong rhythm scene like world music. London, for the whole drum and bass scene. New York's got a lot of everything. I've spent time in Boston studying music and I'd go over to New York on the weekends just to check out the scene. I'll be spending time in Japan touring, that will be fun. Its basically like a dream trip."
The Knitting Factory (New York jazz and avant garde concert venue), is quite big over there.
"It's huge. Something I'm really looking forward to is just checking out the bands there. Its one of the few places where you can perform or run on the fringe of what's accepted and you're playing to a crowd who will accept what you're playing for. I don't know about playing there this trip, but at some stage I'd love to."
I read about there being a big jazz scene in Japan . . .
"They've got like over 120 million people so every minority culture in music as well as majority ones are well supported. You go to Tokyo and there's 60 jazz clubs just there and live music every night of the year. Sixty clubs in one city and that's phenomenal."
As a songwriter, what inspires you most?
"Some of the music I write, just like a lot of pop songs, is influenced by emotional happenings, how I feel or something that happens. But more often than not I'm just messing round on the piano and stuff just falls into place. Because my music is not really lyrical music, it's instrumental, so the emotions have to be conveyed through harmony, melody and rhythm."
On the first album there's some poetry (The Waking by Theodore Roethke). What motivated you to put that there?
"The poet, Theodore Roethke, was not someone I was familiar with before this album. Andrew Dubber, who co-produced the album, kind of helped me into Roethke, specifically that poem. There are a couple of tracks on the second album that are named after poems of his too."
