NAU NUA: -isq

Alone together

Irene Serra is the sensual and melancholic vocalist of the quartet –isq who are presenting their second album titled Too recorded only in two days in January 2014 in the Kent countryside. Richard Salder is on double bass, Chris Nickolls on drums and John Crawford on piano, and the four together create the special sound of –isq, original compositions rooted in the jazz standards but embraced to a wide ranging of musical influences. Talking with Irene Serra one goes from Nat King Cole to Pink Floyd and Michael Jackson. Their live performances are also a proof of that so they use their own songs just as a framework for improvisation in order to move into a completely different place creating always new sound landscapes. I had the chance to interview Irene Serra and discover what’s behind that free musical spirit called –isq.

What does music mean to you?

Everything! It might sound boring but it's actually the only thing I do and the only thing I ever wanted to do. If I'm not writing, rehearsing, practising or teaching, I'm thinking about it. I guess you could call me little obsessed...When Shazam first appeared as an App I thought I had died and gone to heaven because there were so many times I would hear a great tune and not know what it was and then obsess about it for ages trying to find it. Now Shazam does all the hard work. I direct/lead a choir as well which is great fun because that means I also get to sing with lots of other voices. Basically there is nothing better than music making for me and sharing it with other people. I also go and see lots of live gigs as I think that's very important to keep you inspired and grounded as an artist.

Your passion for music comes from your family?

I'm the only professional musician in the family but my mother was and is a great lover of music, especially the classic great singers like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. I guess through her musical tastes was how I first discovered jazz. My dad on the other hand was slightly tone deaf! But from a very young age I was always very adamant that i wanted to study and perform music so a lot of the drive to actually pursue music professionally came from me.

You started studying music in Milan.

I actually grew up in Denmark. I moved there when I was very young and went to the international school in Copenhagen. They had a great music programme and choir, so I studied music alongside all my other subjects. When I moved back to Milan between the ages of 14-18, I continued my studies at an external music academy as there was no music programme in my high school in Milan. Then I came to the UK and continued my music studies at Goldsmiths and got my Masters in Music (Jazz) at the Guildhall School of Music.

And why did you feel attracted by jazz?

I still remember my first vocal jazz lesson. The teacher (an amazing and very well known Italian jazz singer called Tiziana Ghiglioni) asked me to sing a song. I think I sang Honeysuckle Rose, an old jazz standard. And then she told me to improvise. I had no idea what she meant. And she told me to basically make it up musically. I remember the rest of that lesson as being some of the best fun I ever had! The sense of freedom was fantastic and I think it was the first time I had ever really expressed myself musically than just performed the song. Also, the songs and the musicians (and I include vocalists in musicians) were just out of this world!

And have you found that freedom creating the -isq project?

Yes, definitely! We had all been playing together for a while, doing lots of jazz and Brazilian gigs, and I loved working with the other 3 musicians. But what Richard Sadler (the double bass player) and I really wanted to do was write original material using all the diverse musical influences that we had. So we talked about it, asked Chris and John if they were up for forming an original project and that's how we ended up writing the first album. A very good friend of mine described it as intelligent pop with improvisation and I think that's exactly right!

So that's the q of the name, is it the Irene & Sadler quartet?

Well, that's definitely what it could/should be! But yes, we are a quartet and we played around with a few different letterings as we wanted something short and catchy and we just seems to really like that one .-isq (pronounced like D-isc). The hyphen came about almost by accident. We loved it although it has made the Google Search Engine work a lot harder than usual!

That's true! Talking about your diverse musical influences, you define your music as a "crossover". What do you mean?

Well, in this culture of instant gratification maybe some things should be a little bit more difficult to find! Although that certainly wasn't our intention! Even the BBC interviewed us as part of their "Ungoogleable" feature.

That’s funny!

We think -isq is a cross-over project because it's not strictly any genre really. It has elements of jazz, pop, acoustic music, drum and bass grooves, some classical references. We just think of it as good music. And people that have all sorts of different musical interests have responded really well to our music so it doesn't just cater to one specific audience. Improvisation used to be part of pop culture once, if you think of Pink Floyd and even the sax and guitar solos in the 80's . That unfortunately seems to have vanished from the pop musical landscape which is a real shame. I can still sing you all the notes to the guitar solo on Michael Jackson's "Beat It". Epic!

Played by Van Halen!

Exactly! I think that really added to the audience perception of the music as a whole rather than just a vocal heavy performance with a million vocal riffs but very little musical substance. It was also a way for the performers to express themselves. It's such a shame that has been lost.

One of your earlier songs is called “Perpetual” and it reminds me the British band The Soft Machine who mixed pop music with jazz improvisation.

Yes, we released that as a Christmas single hoping to break the charts! Ha ha, that was never going to happen! It's in 23/8 and the groove is so persistent it really keeps us on our toes. The Soft Machine are a great example of that, yes. I mean, pop music with improvisation. I don't know why jazz and improvisation have become such dirty words. They are one of the purest forms of expression and there are so many great young players out there who are trying to turn this anti-jazz tide around.

Some people consider jazz music too elitist, too intellectual.

Well, I can't deny that there are some strands of jazz which do just that. Sometimes I go to gigs and even I don't understand what the hell is going on and I have a Masters in Music! But more to the point, I feel some jazz performers aren't giving enough. We are musicians yes, but we are still performers so we need to perform and engage the audience. Isn't that half of the music-making process? But what is jazz really? It's a melting pot of so many things, especially nowadays that one shouldn't just paint us all with the same brush and dismiss it this fantastically eclectic music out right.

But if you want to express yourself in absolute freedom to try to engage the audience can be a limitation too.

Yes, I completely agree with that. It's about finding the right balance I guess and staying true to what you really want to say as an artist. I always think that if it comes from a truthful, humble place that has to be the right thing to do. Myself and the other band members write the way we write, without too much preoccupation about what other people are going to think or if the music that we are writing is "complex" enough to please some critics. You will never please everyone anyways so I think the best way to go is to just try and stay true to yourself and hopefully the rest will follow.

You present your new album “Too”, why this title?

Our first album was just titled "-isq". As this was the second album so it's a play on words of "two" and "too" meaning "also". Blame the bass player. It was his idea!

Could you tell me about the creation process of the album? Do you write together or first alone?

Well, the music is either written by myself or a co-write between myself and Richard (the bass player) or Chris (the drummer). We sort of write Alone Together (that's the title of a jazz standard too!).As in, when I co-write with Chris and Richard, they will send me the music through or some developed riffs and I write the melody and lyrics over them. It's a great process and seems to work really well, for us.

The cover image of the album is a reference to the track “The secret garden”?

Well spotted! Yes, the front cover is based on a painting by a wonderful London-based artist and friend called Rosanna Dean and I really wanted to depict images of beginnings, truth, human nature and complexity all in one and her painting really did that for me. And yes, there are sexual references throughout the whole album and I think the cover is definitely food for thought.

First track is “Reflections”. Do you think we can be able to see people the way they are and not as a reflection of us?

I think that's definitely an ideal situation. But unfortunately I think that throughout all types of relationships we project what we would like that other person to be and how we would like that other person to behave and fit into our lives rather than just accepting who they truly are perhaps and seeing them honestly. I see this in all sorts of relationships from girlfriends/boyfriends to friendships, parent/child etc. And we do this to ourselves too. Are we ever being truly honest to ourselves? It is very hard to really look at your flaws and mistakes and accept them. Especially nowadays with our celebrity and media obsessed culture and this pursuit of perfection. Failings and imperfections are seen as something wrong and to be hidden or avoided at all costs. I just see them as a natural part of being a normal woman. These frankly unobtainable and quite ridiculous beauty and lifestyle standards have nothing to do with art and all to do with vanity instead. A bit of vanity is healthy but look at where too much got Narcissus. Also, a lot of my favourite music and art in general comes from imperfection and human failings. Because that is what we all have in common. I wish we could all just admit that more often.

That creates too many "falling stars"?

Absolutely! We are basically being set up to fail...Look at all those perfect him and her Facebook and Instagram pictures. And I think the divorce rate has never been higher in any period of time. The internet allows you to show the best version of you rather than the true version of you.

And the song "Falling stars" talks about a personal experience?

It's actually based on a friends’ relationship but I can't go into too much detail or I might get into trouble!

Your latest video single is “Zion”. Could you tell me about the meaning of the song and the concept behind the video? It has a kind of mystical atmosphere.

I just basically wanted to depict the yin and yang in my character and so of course how it affects the relationships I'm in. Although the roof tops were shot in the daylight, they have a much darker feel than the sequences shot in the cave which seem brighter somehow. I even wrote it in the lyrics to “Tears of a clown"...still the darkest of places has room for a light..." But yes, mystical atmosphere is right because for me "Zion" is basically "the heavenly city or the kingdom of heaven", so basically this mythical place of a higher ground. The song is basically about the person I love being just generally a better person than me so it's a bit of an ode to him. But that doesn't mean that i don't deserve love as well.

And in your life there’s more “light or shade”?

Depends on what day you ask me! Seriously.....but I think light...I am quite a happy go lucky person when you meet me! I think it's great that I can get all my strange, twisted and wonderful thoughts out in the music so I don't keep them inside as much.

“Tears of a clown”... Has it any link with the song by Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson?

No, not at all...I just absolutely love the title...clowns are meant to be these happy characters who are supposed to make us laugh but I have always found them incredibly sad to look at...

Like in the Leoncavallo's opera "I pagliacci" and the aria "Vesti la giubba" when the clown sings "laugh Clown, laugh" but he's crying…

Exactly! The crying clown....You can have sad laughter or happy tears. Our life is all about these sweet little contradictions.

Last question: could you tell me a dream you’ve had while sleeping?

Dreams...I'm never one to usually remember my dreams....I think it's because I spend so much time daydreaming when I'm awake. Seriously! Half the time I'm in my own world anyways...

That means you really like your own world.

Love it!