Jazz vocalist Kristin Berardi and guitarist James Sherlock are a formidable duo, playing and making music together for over ten years.
The pair have released four albums together, the most recent being 'I'm Glad There Is You', a rare recording of jazz standards for Kristin and James who usually write original music. Their second album 'If You Were There' picked up the Bell Award For Best Vocal Jazz Release in 2010.
James and yourself will be releasing your fourth album in September; it's a collection of standards and well-known jazz repertoire. What can listeners expect?
Well, playing with someone that you have a deep, musical connection with is always a special thing because you can be completely in the moment and you never really know what will happen, so it’s very spontaneous which is fun for us and hopefully for the audience too. So listeners can expect some joyful and honest renditions of some of our favourites tunes of the jazz repertoire at the moment.
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It's the first time you have not featured any original tunes; was that planned?
No it wasn’t planned. Because we live in different cities now, when we get together we run our ideas through and when we got together to practice we tried some originals that we both had written and were hoping to record on this album, but they didn’t seem to flow as well as the standards. We realised that the songs we were both writing at the moment just didn’t suit this setting, so we had to accept this as a standards album. Thankfully we both love standards too.
And will you and James record future original compositions together?
Yes we will.
You will be launching the album with a show at JMI Live; what do you two have planned for the evening?
Just to share this new lot of songs with our friends and fans here in Brisbane. It should be a very lovely vibe seeing as both of us have family and some of our long-term friends here in Queensland.
JMI as a local and national jazz institution; what do Nick and Dan Quigley and their team offer is substantial to the jazz scene?
Nick and Dan Quigley are amazing. They run an excellent and successful jazz school, a great music venue, they organise so many live performances around Brisbane for others and do gigs themselves. They give and do so much for the jazz scene in Brisbane and not only here but have an amazing programme called Essentially Ellington Down Under, which connects the prestigious Lincoln Centre (NYC) and JMI doing workshops around the country. We are very lucky to have the Quigleys here in Brisbane.
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You've been recording and performing together for a decade plus; how has the creative partnership evolved, developed in that time?
Yes, it has changed and developed over time. We both lived in Brisbane when we started playing music together and so we did a lot of rehearsing and a lot of gigs, both background music gigs in the beginning and concerts. Now we have spent more than half of the time playing together, living in different states, so how we find pieces and how we rehearse has changed a lot.
We text or email each other suggesting songs we’re listening to at the moment or ones that we’d like to do together and then the other person learns it (if they like it too). We usually only get to rehearse the day of a gig and so things develop very differently to the beginning. Sometimes one of us will develop an arrangement before we rehearse and send it through, and other times an arrangement or idea for an arrangement will happen when we are running together for the first time. The iPhone is great for that, as you can send through a voice memo and capture the arrangement so quickly and shoot it through the air to the other person. Maybe technology is okay.
Are you able to interpret and read what the other is going to play in advance?
It is pretty amazing how much you can read the other person when you’ve played together for so long. I’m amazed at how James seems to know what I’m going to do sometimes.
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James and yourself have played Montreux and Java jazz festivals; memorable experiences?
Yes. At Montreux we could hear people side of stage cheering us on and we thought it was a bit weird seeing as we didn’t know anyone at the festival. At the end of the song, we looked over and it was Al Jarreau and his band woo-ing cheering! The other memorable thing was getting asked what temperature we wanted our water for onstage. That hasn’t happened again.
At Java Jazz I just remember we had a beautiful, Indonesian nanny who would appear when we were to perform and hold my son while we were on stage, as he was only three-months old at the time. She was so tiny he looked so huge on her. We couldn’t communicate, but there was a beautiful connection between us because of this little child.
Do you enjoy performing live to audiences?
Yes, very much. I love singing and I love sharing music with others. I hope the music can be a helpful escape for a moment or a song, or allow someone to feel, to remember, to imagine something. I guess to be transported somewhat from one’s day-to-day lives is what I hope I can give to the listener, and I feel lucky that that is part of my 'job'.
What other creative projects do you have in the works?
The other projects I have at the moment are my trio with Sean Foran and Rafael Karlen (Brisbane) and a new album to come out soon with them and special guest Pascal Schumacher (Lux); a new duo with bassist Sam Anning (Melbourne); a blues/ folk trio with Dave McGuire and Joel Gregory (Brisbane) and some collaborations in the works for 2018 with Florian Ross (Germany) and Miro Sprauge and Ingrid Jensen (New York City).
The appeal of jazz (as well as soul, blues and similar fringe genres) with a younger audience seems to have increased significantly in the recent past; do you also sense that?
Yes, I think so. I hope so! I felt that and saw it at a Snarky Puppy concert in last year, and I was so encouraged at the young and diverse group of people there.
