Australian jazz singer and multi-instrumentalist, Darren Percival, will be diving back into his musical roots when he helps headline this year’s Noosa Jazz Festival.
“When I left school in 1989, I was actually a finalist in James Morrison's jazz scholarship,” Darren explains. “I started working with him in 1990 and we worked together for about eight years. So my beginnings in the entertainment industry working as a professional singer actually were in jazz.”
While Darren achieved national recognition as a runner-up on ‘The Voice’ in 2012 for his stellar vocal performances, he had been a well-established singer long before some of the show’s judges could even walk. “A lot of people think that because I popped up on a singing competition on television that maybe I wasn't singing before that,” Darren says, “but 2015 marks 30 years of singing professionally.”
To mark this milestone, Darren is headlining the 24th Annual Noosa Jazz Festival alongside long-time friend and mainstay of the Australian jazz scene Emma Pask, and says the festival is the perfect setting for his homecoming. “It's a great festival, a great stage and a really great start for me … to come back to this music that really shaped me as a singer, to come back to the Noosa Jazz Festival is really important to me; to come back to this music and doing Noosa Jazz as a way of starting back in that world is really important.”
Darren’s performance will largely feature tracks from a forthcoming album, which pays tribute to the big bands and even bigger vocalists of the 1960s. “I’m making an album of bossa nova music that Frank Sinatra credits as the music that brought show bands to the West back in the '60s. That was really the first time Portuguese music had been translated into English, so I’m doing a project called ‘Like A Bossa Nova’ and that's what I'll be performing at Noosa Jazz, amongst other things, but primarily that's what we're doing.”
As a protégé of James Morrison and a successful musician in his own right, it might leave some of us lesser mortals scratching our heads as to why he would opt-in to a reality singing franchise such as ‘The Voice’. The answer is surprisingly simple and pragmatic. “It was really to get exposure because it's quite challenging in this country,” he says.
“It's a big land mass but it's a small population so to actually get in the lounge rooms of Australians, you have to be on television. As much as there are ‘likes’ on Facebook and people following you on Twitter and views on YouTube, the way to connect with Australian audiences still is to be on television.
“Fortunately the songs that were chosen for me were the right ones, I had the right coach and it was an amazing experience; very inspiring and fulfilling and I'm really happy I made the decision to do it.”
The past three years since his appearance on the show has seen Darren’s career taken to new highs, including his own radio show and a YouTube channel, both called ‘Up Close And Percival’.
Now living on the Sunshine Coast with his family and managing his own career, Darren is keen to become a part of the area’s vibrant musical community. “Living on the Coast is really something we’ve been dreaming about doing for a long time and I think getting involved with events on the coast, like Noosa Jazz Festival, is a really important part of living in this area.
“It’s a really big opportunity to be part of something, I think that’s really special … Emma Pask headlining and various other artists from around the country coming in, it’s really going to be a great festival this year.”
Darren Percival Tour Dates
Fri 31 July – The Basement (Sydney)Fri 21 August – Soundlounge (Currumbin)
Sat 22 August – 505 (Sydney)
Thurs 3 - Sun 6 September – Noosa Jazz Festival (Sunshine Coast)
Fri 11 September – Brass Monkey (Cronulla)
