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Changing The Climate  Scottish vocalist, Sophie Bancroft, comes from another of the musical dynasties north of the border. Sister of Tom and Phil Bancroft (drummer and saxophonist respectively), Sophie has been making herself heard on not just her local jazz scene but also further a field, and with the release of her new album, Hot & Cold (which is also her best to date) is surely going to win herself some new fans to go with an already established following. Interview by Nick Lea. Recorded at the Sound Caf?, Penicuik, Scotland in Autumn/Winter 2004 after ?having gigged the new songs during 2004 to let them settle in?, Sophie?s latest album is a heady mixture of jazz/pop and folk music that can easily be enjoyed on several levels. Ideal to listen to in the car, it can provide a gentle accompaniment to that commuter drive home form work; or stands up to a more in depth listening experience as the voice blends seamlessly with a band and arrangements that are tried and tested, and each song having it?s own story to tell. ?I?m glad you feel that about the album? enthuses Sophie. ?This is most definitely an album of songs which have been penned with a strong band identity in mind. Having worked with my new band for the past couple of years, including the Modern Love recording made in 2003, I feel that my song-writing and performance skills have developed and found a musical identity which hadn?t been so apparent to me previously. Therefore song-writing has become a much more focused work for me now and I know what instrumentation and character of players I am writing for.? ?Also,? Sophie continues ?in this context the choice of cover songs is always very important to find songs that work alongside my own compositions. I am always keen to sing cover songs as it gives me an insight into other peoples writing which helps my own, and pushes me as a singer to explore melodies and lyrics that haven?t come out of my own head. For example, on ?Hot & Cold? I used a song written by Sandy Wright, my guitarist and great friend, who also is a fantastic songwriter ? writes songs (eg ?Tom Weir?) used by the up and coming pop band Aberfeldy , which is just a great cheeky song that you can say something with. And a song called ?Mad Mad Me? by a songwriter called Wendy Waldmen, which I first heard on a CD that my Dad had when I was young, by a singer called Maria Muldaur, just fantastic. I?ve ended up covering 4 songs off that CD during my career as a singer ? I like her choices.? So, it is fair to say that song-writing is important to you. ?If I didn?t write songs, I think I would explode!?, Sophie laughs. ?It?s my way of processing stuff. I now have a particular feeling I can recognize when there is a song ready to come out of me. This is something I didn?t have when I first started writing, which is kind of useful. As a singer, it also allows me to work on melody and the emotion of music that works best with my voice and performance abilities, as well as making it clearer which cover songs to choose.? In a world that where pigeon-holing is inevitable (if not regrettable), I ask Sophie where she feels that she sits musically within the grand scheme of things, and does she feel comfortable with the way that your music is perceived? ?This has always been tricky. Obviously my background is jazz, and that certainly comes through in my music, but I have also had a lot to do with folk, sophisticated pop and some electronic dance music as well, and more recently country, so all of these come in to the mix. The pigeon hole of jazz seems to be so exceedingly wide nowadays that I guess it fits in there just fine, but I?m equally inclined to adult album alternative, or adult contemporary label. I recently had a review which referred to the jazz influence combined with the folky-country-pop sounds. Maybe there?s a new pigeon hole that hasn?t been defined yet.? Sophie continues ?My concern with the jazz labelling, is that I know as a jazzer originally, my music is not strictly jazz, so jazz purists will question the jazz label. However I think with the likes of Norah Jones et al recently, the label of jazz has opened its doors to many sophisticated listeners that wouldn?t normally have chosen to listen to jazz. I guess at the end of the day, as a singer and songwriter, I have jazz ears, with a folky-country-pop sensibility.? Whilst musing over the question of pigeon-holing and musical boundaries, it is almost inevitable that we start talking about influences that have found themselves in the Bancroft melting pot. ?So many? she enthuses, ?Debussy and Mozart. The Police, Santana, Bill Withers, Pat Metheny, Miles Davis, George Russell, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Astrud Gilberto, Maria Muldaur, Madeline Eastman, Everything But The Girl, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton, Tom Waits, Chet Baker, Sheila Jordan, Fionna Duncan, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Gil Scott Heron, Michael Franti ? all for many different reasons and there are many more that I could list but those came out first!? Quiet a melting pot, so how did you get interested in music, and jazz in particular? ?My parents were both semi-pro jazz musicians? explains Sophie, ?so jazz was always played in the house. I have many memories of falling asleep as a young child to jazz parties. I learnt piano from the age of 4 (classical piano that is) and got up to grade 8 at 13. I also taught myself guitar at 8 or 9 and started writing some basic folk songs, and then left song-writing until adulthood. I rebelled musically (and most other ways in fact) as a teenager and got into rock and pop, but at around 17 I realized I wanted to sing jazz, and told my Dad who sat me down and got me to listen to his favourite Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald and Astrud Gilberto tracks which has been one of the most amazing lessons I have ever had and still lives with me to this day. ?I then gigged with the family for a couple of years, my brothers Tom and Phil Bancroft are both pro jazz musicians (drums and saxophone, respectively), and then started working my own jazz combos from the age of 19. At this point I met the wonderful jazz singer Fionna Duncan who took me under her wing and would give me all her dep gigs, that was such a great experience and a great vote of confidence ? which is so very important to young musicians. There were no obvious educational routes for jazz singers then that there are nowadays, so this practical route was fantastic, an apprenticeship in fact, probably the best way really and there were enough gigs to do that then (20 years ago) unlike today.? If there were ?no educational opportunities for singers? available, ironically Sophie found herself actively involved in jazz education taking up a post as Britain's first Jazz Education Development Officer. So how did this come about, I enuire. ? A fateful kind of a thing really. I was a bit restless, happened to look at the Guardian (not a paper I usually got) when the arts job section was in it. There was a post advertised for a Jazz Education Development Officer ? not something you see very often, a job with the word jazz in it ? so I decided to apply as I had been doing some administration and programming work for the Glasgow International Jazz Festival at the time and enjoyed it, and ended up getting the job!? Sounds interesting, so just what does a Jazz Education Development Officer do? ?Well, the post involved facilitating jazz workshops around the south of England, booking musicians and tutors, liasing with schools etc; as well as raising funding, researching jazz education and lobbying parliament as it was the era before improvisation was fully ensconced in the school curriculum. It was a huge remit, and in fact ended up being quite unrealistic for one person to undertake, but I learnt a huge amount from doing it, and subsequently have gone on to become a busy jazz education tutor myself.?  Which brings us neatly to what is often a controversial subject in itself, jazz education. With everyone having an opinion that can often fuel passionate debate I tentatively ask Sophie her feeling on jazz education. Is it something that can be taught in great depth or does it rely more on intuition coupled with formal study? Considering her reply carefully, Sophie replied ?I think when dealing with motivated students it certainly can be taught in great depth. I think formal study ? if you mean the classical orientation, does little to aid jazz education and often will stifle it. Jazz education is a huge subject in itself, and the beauty of it is that it can be applied in small ways that will have a great impact on even a non-musical person. Just through creative expression through improvisation, can be applied in medium ways that will impact people musically who are exploring other areas of music such as folk, pop, soul etc. And as I said previously, if taught at great depth produces as serious and accomplished a musician as through formal study. It is an extremely versatile approach to music, and focuses on individuality of it which is its greatest strength.? Sophie laughs, ?Can you tell that I am a fan of jazz education??!!?From here the conversation returned to Sophie?s recorded output as leader and side woman on other projects. With Hot & Cold her third album under her own name, it seems along time ago that she made her first disc in 1999, Miles Away with bassist, Tom Lyne. ?Tom and I recorded this in a shed at our house in the centre of Edinburgh,? she recalls ?6 months after we had got married after a very romantic transatlantic love affair? (Tom is Canadian). ?Despite the basic studio system, we managed to capture something special on that recording and it continues to sell well.? In 2002 you were featured on altogether different project, 'This Utopia' with the US band Spylab. How did this collaboration come about? ?Spylab are in fact from Paisley in the West of Scotland, but had a recording deal with Chicago based dance label, Guidance. Kenny and Jonathan from Spylab had been looking for an improvising singer to work with on their album, and searched the internet and found me. So we started working together without meeting each other initially. They sent me tracks of the songs they were wanting me to work on and I put them on my computer in cubase, cut them up in to segments that would work for me as song-writing blocks. I then worked on a melody and lyrics and recorded them in our studio at home. I simply sent the vocal tracks back over to Kenny and Jon and then they would produce the track. It was in fact a great way to work, with no-one cramping anyone?s individual style, but still being able to have the musical interaction. The CD went on to be a great success in the dance charts with various mixes of some of the tracks, and one track was used on the huge TV drama ?Six Feet Under?.? In 2003 you were back in the studio to record the follow up to Miles Away, entitled Modern Love. ?The CD came about after forming my current band, and after a year of us gigging together and finding a start point to the bands identity. The CD has more of an electronic influence in some of the tracks because of my, then recent, collaboration with Spylab, as well as addressing some quite blatant folk approaches, jazz approaches and soul. We covered a great song by Ben Watt from Everything But The Girl ?? Before Today?, and a song by Zero 7 that had recently been very successful, called ?Destiny?. It?s always fun making someone else?s song your own, and I think we achieved that with these covers.?  So with the new album in the shops, so what about plans for the future? ?Well,? Sophie replies, ?I have a manager now who is doing a fantastic job. It is so great having someone who pushes me and is creative with the business angle so that I can be a bit more freed up to be just creative! I?m aiming for more radio play, more gigs around more places, more radio in US and Canada as well as Europe, and some good distribution deals for the CDs. I have also written some new tunes for the next CD, so there will definitely be another one in the future, if not (hopefully) many more. I would like more people to hear the music because I know the people that do hear it really like it. And? she continues enthusiastically ?I have the most fantastic band ? Tom Lyne on bass, Sandy Wright on guitar, Chick Lyall on piano/keyboard, Donald Hay on drums ? I am a lucky girl!?For more information visit www.sophiebancroft.co.uk |
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