Your occupation, job title, artistic discipline (or very brief description of what you do).

I’m a self-proclaimed musician currently trapped working in hospitality making latte art.

What cities/towns have you lived in (or spent more than a few months in) beginning with the place of your birth?

London, York, Frome, Switzerland (Verbier), Broome, Mount Maunganui.

What’s an average day in your life at present? 

Waking up – going to work – finishing work – trying to get to the gym or out for a walk on the beach. Keep warm! See a friend if possible, eat well, try to get to sleep early-ish.

 

How do you want your music to make audiences feel?

The major goal of mine when it comes to playing my music to people is that it makes them feel SOMETHING. Literally anything: happy, sad, angry, inspired, hopeful. To be able to write something that another human being can relate to in some way is important to me.

If you could open a show for any musician in the world (dead or alive), who would it be? Why?

There are a few people I could answer this with… ahem, ahem, Harry Styles. But I would have to say, one of my all-time favourites, Bon Iver. I have loved his music for many years and he has stood the test of time in terms of his music being consistently listenable and timeless (for me). It would be an honour to even be in the same room as him.

If you didn’t become a musician, what would you be doing?

Anything and everything in the creative world. Somehow. All of it. Probably an interior designer, or a stylist (of people and homes), working closely with wedding dress makers, working for Millie Savage (an incredible Australian jeweller) learning how to make rings and such. I also would love to read books for a living.

What music was present and still memorable from your youth/adolescence?

I was very lucky to be brought up listening to classical music and a lot of jazz and blues. I would say most memorable would be these four:

The Magic Flute – Mozart
Graceland – Paul Simon
Handel’s Messiah
Clandestino – Manu Chao

Funnily enough. Handel’s Messiah always reminded me of family and christmas. Manu Chao was what my parents would play during their dinner parties. However, my adolescence would have to be the mixtapes my god-brother used to make me for my birthdays and they contained such a vast range from ABBA to the Beatles to Queen to Billy Joel to Sweet Female Attitude to Sisqo to Jamiroquai.

 

For you as a creative person, who are three influential artists or thinkers?

I don’t even know how to answer this. Can I choose authors? Musical artists? Or art artists? I would say Elizabeth Day (author, journalist, how to fail podcast) is someone who I rush to listen to and have quoted a lot in my recent years. I also have always loved artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Gustav Klimt. Musically, I am continuously stunned by so many people so often. There is so much out there to discover and someone might write even just one incredible song. Currently I am listening to a lot of “boygenius”, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker.

In one sentence, can you define art?

There is always room for more, for different, for extraordinary, for ordinary, to be the first, to be the second, to do it your way, to try it their way, to make people question things, to show everyone, to show no one, for only you, for only them, to figure things out, to figure nothing out. Art is what you make it and it often can’t be explained in words.

What is missing or lacking from your Bay of Plenty community or environment?

More female artists on festival line ups, not just in the Bay of Plenty but all over the North Island.

 

Name a few films that you consider profound, moving or extraordinary.

Again, a very difficult question for me to answer. Don’t judge me, but Barbie – Greta Gerwig’s new film, it’s phenomenal. Hidden Figures was a big one, learning that there were women involved in getting man onto the moon. As a child we watched Whale Rider as a family (long before I had any idea I would live in New Zealand) and it always felt like a significant story. Also, Harry Potter, that entire world was imagined and created by one person’s mind. It made magic feel real, and I think the impact it had on our generation was extraordinary.

Where would you like to live, but have yet to?

I would like to be living in Cornwall where my mum’s family is from. I spent a lot of time there growing up but have never been based there. It is somewhere I have always wanted to create a home in.

What word of advice would you offer an aspiring creative person?

Just start.

What’s the biggest problem about life in New Zealand? How you would solve it?

Aaaaaaahhhhh. The cost of living crisis. It is getting incredibly hard to be here and enjoy what the country has to offer. Obviously there is no quick fix. But I would start by figuring out how to lower the cost of petrol and food. Then I would maybe try to work on how to raise the wages for people who are in hospitality, agriculture and hospice care. But I am not a politician.

What is your dream of happiness?

To be able to create full time without worrying about my finances and to be able to support future creatives in that endeavour also.

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