2017 Freedman Jazz Fellowship Award winner Emma Stephenson has been living and working in New York for the past eight months. She was briefly back in Sydney in April to attend a couple of weddings which gave Mick Paddon, presenter of Time and Space a chance to catch up with her to ask about how she is managing in the New York jazz scene. Emma talked about the particular approach she has taken to playing piano and getting experience by playing and singing in bars while she writes songs and music preparing for an ambitious recording project with multiple singers. She is influenced by a wide range of song writers who share an interest in the words as much as the music. She shared her thoughts. about whether it is easier for a young female jazz instrumentalist to make it in New York or in Sydney.The interview was a follow up to the profile of Emma that Mick broadcast and podcast last year in his Changing the Face of Jazz series. Part way through the interview we hear pianist Fred Hersch play his interpretation of “And So it Goes” from his album Open Book, a piece chosen by Emma because, as she says, it almost brought her to tears when she heard Fred Hersch perform it. The interview closes with Emma’s song “if the sun had a choice” performed by Gian Slater with Emma’s Hieronymus Trio from their CD Where the Rest of the World Begins. The interview and the music were first broadcast during Time and Space on Wednesday May 2nd
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Emma Stephenson from New York to Time and Space
