Interview at Jazzforum (PL)

Thanks Marek Romanski for this extended interview for Jazz Forum Poland!

Translation into English:

She is a sensitive, colorful butterfly who likes many different flowers. Yumi Ito comes from a Polish-Japanese family, was born and lives in Switzerland, and is a charismatic singer and pianist associated also with theater and visual arts. She recently released her fourth album, "Eku- al", recorded in duo with guitarist Szymon Mika.

Half-Polish, half-Japanese

I'm now in a hotel in Stans, in the middle of Switzerland. I'm taking part in a teathre project, playing the piano and singing. There is fog in the circles, my surroundings remind me a bit of my album "Stardust Crystals" and the pictures in the booklet. They were also taken in November, only in Poland, in Katowice.

They were taken by Maria Jarzyna. We would get up at five in the morning to achieve such an effect.

Nature inspires me a lot, the fog, the mountains - it makes everything seem a little bit unreal. It reminds me of Iceland, where I went three times and worked on my tracks.

My mom comes from Poland, from Olsztyn, and my dad from Nagano, Japan. They are both musicians - my mom is a classical singer and my dad is a pianist. They met already in Switzerland, in Basel, where they studied at the famous Schola Cantorum. First they played together, and then they decided to go through life together. I spoke Polish and Japanese from childhood. My grandmother used to come to me from Poland to help my mother when she had to perform. When my parents went on tour I used to go with them on tour, so I toured all over the world. They often played in Japan, my second - or maybe third? - homeland. My parents spoke English with each other and that was another language I use to write lyrics in. I use German and Swiss dialect in my everyday life - that's the language I use to communicate with people in Switzerland.

These languages have influenced me. They shaped my musical sensibility. Thanks to them I became interested in different sounds, in the possibility to operate with the voice, to use all its tones. My situation has also marked me emotionally - I grew up in a house of immigrants. Their longing was with me from an early age. They missed their countries, their loved ones, their culture, their customs. This longing remained in me, and my music stems from it. On the other hand, I am grateful to my parents for the musical world in which they brought me up, for the fact that I could visit their homelands. Other children would go on vacation to Spain or Portugal and I would go to Poland or Japan. The cultures of these countries are in me, they make me more open and richer. I was born in Switzerland but for a long time I felt like a stranger here, only later did I learn about this country and its customs from my friends and acquaintances - but there was no Switzerland in my home. My situation made me feel at home everywhere but I don't feel at home anywhere. My real home is music.

I feel a bond with Poland and Japan. Maybe I am a bit closer to Poland because it is in Europe, so it is easier for me to keep in touch with Poland. But Japan is also close to me - I remember how moved I was by the catastrophe at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. I played concerts there and I realized that what happens there is very important to me. In Japan people live in awareness of the power of nature, which can manifest itself in tsunamis or earthquakes. They live for the moment more than in Europe. Japanese culture is full of myths, this sphere also has an impact on people's lives. I remember that the events in Fukushima frightened many non-Japanese musicians, they wanted to cancel concerts and go home. I just wanted to give people my music, I didn't think about anything else, although I was afraid at the beginning. This ability to put aside all doubts, to focus on the moment, on what I have to do - this is very Japanese, and that's when I felt I was Japanese too.

I chose music

Although my parents are musicians, I always felt that I chose music. At just a few years old, I was already playing a small baby piano. I tried to imitate my parents, playing and singing. I remember my first lesson when I was three years old. My dad would put stickers on the keys so I would know what sounds were there. My parents were classical musicians, but my Japanese grandfather played jazz on the clarinet. I later learned that he wanted my dad to be a jazz pianist, but he chose otherwise.

When I was thirteen I started to experience a period of rebellion - I didn't practice the piano as intensively as before - I pretended more than I practiced. (laughs) I went to punk concerts and wore black. It was an important experience for me - now you can hear some rock in my music. I also feel that the black metal harmonies I was fascinated with back then can be a starting point for my own explorations.

Improvisation

Ever since I was a child I loved to improvise - I recorded myself on tapes, I made up different stories and theatrical scenes. I am an only child - I didn't have any other children around me, so I often had to tell my own stories, take on different roles. This certainly had an impact on what I do now - I have been playing and singing my own songs for a long time now. And through them I tell my stories from different points of view, I play different roles - although they are all parts of my own personality. I also started cooperating with theaters quite early. In everyday life I'm quite secretive, even a bit shy. In the theater I can be many different people and I don't have this mental resistance anymore. They may not be different people - they're just different sides of my own personality that I wasn't even aware of before. I feel a little bit the same way when I play a sidewoman in someone else's project.

At the beginning I was inspired by the great figures of classical music. I was very fond of Maria Callas. I also found three jazz albums among my parents' records - the Oscar Peterson Trio, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. These were my first inspirations - I listened to this music very often, especially in autumn I played Ella and Louis. I also liked McFerrin with Yo Yo Má. I also had Gheorghe Zamfir's album, I liked 90s pop by Christina Aquilera or even Britney Spears. Later I got to know Bjork, and also Billie Holiday. I didn't find Bjork's voice and singing very appealing at first, but after a while I reached for her again and fell in love with her. I listened to her album "Debut" over and over again, I also liked her picture on the cover. Graphics and video art inspire me very much and still play an important role in my life.

In the early 2000s, after my first year of studies in Zurich, I went to New York and there I met Bobby McFerrin and took part in his circle songs workshop. It was an amazing experience for me. I also met Gretchen Parlato there, I was fascinated by her inner singing. I had known traditional jazz singing before - Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, and Gretchen offered something completely new and different. I tried to imitate her - it was an important stage in my development. At Siena Jazz I heard Theo Bleckman and later took lessons from him.

When I was in New York I got terribly excited about American jazz. I went to concerts every night, for example to a club called Smalls, I remember there were some older musicians playing there and I was completely enchanted by them. Later I decided to go back to Europe and concentrate on artists from that continent. I felt that this is my music and I should devote myself to it. I also started composing my own stuff.

Some people compare my music on "Stardust Crystals" with Kate Bush - but I heard her much later and she didn't influence me much. I met Becca Stevens in 2017 at a Focus Year workshop in Basel - I really liked her folk experiments and the fact that she comes from a jazz background. We sang her songs and it turned out that we have a very similar voice scale. I also met Szymon Mika during the workshops. There was a very relaxed, international atmosphere. Music was our common language (laughs). We were visited by great musicians like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Dave Holland, Steve Swallow. Wolfgang Muthspiel is the originator and director of this program. I remember when Swallow was the host, we played his song Falling Grace, and Steve really encouraged us to do a duet. At that time we even played our first duo concert and Wolfgang Muthspiel, who was in the audience, encouraged us to form a duo. Anyway, we felt that we played well together and we were friends.

What fascinates me the most in jazz is its own character that it gives. Also in the sense of developing, re-harmonizing motifs, themes, fra- ctions - the palette of possibilities is enormous. Thanks to that you become a composer. In my music there must always be improvisation - I don't feel good without it. I think this is also very Japanese - living in the moment, it fits very well with this part of my personality. In jazz something is changing all the time, you rarely repeat the same phrases - this pairs for me with the changeability of nature, which is very important to me.

In 2015 I won a prize from the Montreux Jazz Vocal Competition - and that was the ultimate confirmation for me that I should go my own way, write my own music and perform it. On the jury was Al Jarreau, whom I adore. At that time I was still singing standards, but I was already writing my own songs and that was the impulse for me to change. I discovered myself then as a composer. I started to write songs for the album "Stardust Crystals". Another plus of winning was that later all the winners met at the so called "Montreux Jazz Academy" where they could work together with great musicians like Al Jarreau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ziv Ravitz or Nil Petter Molvaer. They supported me a lot in creating my own music - and that was probably the most important thing for me in this whole victory.

Tradition and free

I recorded my first album "Intertwined" with my quartet when I was in college in 2016. This album was still heavily inspired with jazz tradition, and I sang my favourite standards on it including Cheek to Cheek and The Nearness Of You. I arranged them in my own way, without drums - because I wanted clarity of sound texture. Thanks to that they took on the character of chamber music. It was a return to my fascination with the music of Ella and Louis.

A year later I recorded another album, "Ypsilon", in a duo with the pianist Yves Theiler, who also played on my first album - this time with our compositions. I was influenced by free music at the time, which you can hear on this album. It was a very important stage for me to practice free improvisation. At that time I was playing a lot of free music in Zurich - I had a period of rebellion and uncompromising. A bit later I also went through a phase of rejecting nice melodies, I wanted to sing with all the sounds available to me - also the "ugly", unconventional ones. I also learned from saxophonists and pianists, I imitated their sound. Today I use all these experiences in my vocal improvisations.

Nature

In 2018 and 2019, I traveled to Eskifjordur in Iceland. The time spent in Iceland was like a great meditation for me. I was close to nature there, which strongly influenced my compositions that I wrote there. It changed me in general - after coming back to Switzerland I also rediscovered nature in this country. My perspective and perception of my surroundings changed.

Before, I often dreamt that I was somewhere in the North, that it was snowing in the summer, that I missed a bus and had no way to get where I wanted to go. I felt that this could be Iceland - and it really was, I found the reality of my dreams there.

I lived in a tiny house in a small village, there were no instruments - so I borrowed a guitar, which I tried to play and composed with. Although I don't know how to play this instrument! (laughs) At that time I was finishing the pieces for the "Stardust Crystals" album which I recorded with my orchestra. It was a time of stopping, looking into myself, cutting myself off from the chaos of the world and discovering how I really am.

The pieces I wrote there had this space in them which surrounded me. That's when I became more interested in the visual side of music - choosing the cover art, photos, graphic designs, and videos to accompany my songs. The video for Little Things from "Stardust Crys- tals" was created right there, while traveling around Iceland.

I wrote the songs on this album from two points of view. First I heard all the arrangements in my head, the harp, strings, bells etc. and I started to compose for this imagined composition. Later I took musicians from different parts of Europe - Spain, Greece, London and other countries, also from Poland (Izabella Effenberg and Kuba Dworak played). However, I wrote some of the songs when I had all these wonderful musicians, knowing what they can do, what they are best at.

An important theme on this album is nature, our relationship to it, what we do with it. During the pandemic I did a lot of walking in the mountains in Switzerland, I observed how nature changes, how it is in constant movement - just like music, just like I would like my music to change. I felt how small I am in relation to nature, how being close to it makes me take over some of its power. It hurts me so much that we are destroying and polluting nature, which should be the very source of our strength. In Spain, I saw piles of garbage on the beach. I also saw a dead dolphin that the sea had thrown away, it was a shocking experience for me. I put the emotion of that into the songs on "Stardust Crystals" - especially the title track.

In Brazil, I collaborated with Auritha Tabajara, an artist of indigenous descent, who wrote poems about the destruction of the jungle and how it affects the people who live there.

This album is also about us, people - about how complicated we are, how many contrasts there are in us. How much we don't know ourselves - we think we are masters of the world, but it only takes a moment to break down and sink into despair. Little Things was written under the influence of the fact that a very important person for me ended up in a psychiatric hospital. I visited her often and was devastated by the fact that suddenly you can fall out of society, be locked up and isolated - even though you used to be full of life, joy, have a partner, friends and acquaintances. And suddenly you are alone, like in a cage.

Ekual

When I was already recording with the orchestra I started working with Szymon Mika on the "Ekual" album. I didn't really realize it - but maybe it's like you say, that we search for balance in ourselves and in life. And maybe that's why, after the extensive "Stardust Crystals", recorded with many musicians, it was time for an intimate duet with a guitarist. Working with Szymon is very flexible, many things happen intuitively. We understand each other very well and I don't have to tell him much which way the music should go - he knows it himself. Of course a lot of things are written, but we fill it with spontaneous reactions.

On this album I not only sing leading the melody lines, but I also accompany Szymon, imitate drums with my voice, do many different things - I use my experience with total singing. We have a lot of space to improvise and also to interact with each other. This is the only project of mine where we are both leaders. It came about

It came about very naturally, I am not guided by theory, I learn through experience and that is how it was this time too.

I also like the fact that in our duo there is as much masculine element as feminine. I wish there were more women in jazz, I'm full of hope, because this attitude has been changing lately - and our band is an example of gender balance. This is also one of the meanings of the album's title "Ekual" - it means "equal".

The songs on this album are a reflection of my feelings, thoughts, emotions, they are quite personal. My Restless Mind is about memories, which become a way of escaping from dark thoughts, of which we all have a lot lately. In contrast to the restlessness and chaos in the mind, there is peace in nature.

We recorded this album in Poland and I was very excited about it because it is one of my home countries, a special place for me. That's why I think the message of this album is quite positive.

You're right that the song Minha Flor stands out from the rest of the album because initially I didn't plan it for this duet at all - it was supposed to be played by my orchestra. But Szymon proposed me to play it. I didn't even have a guitar part written - I just gave him the lines of the different orchestral instruments in the score - and then he transposed them onto the guitar. It's quite a sensual, somewhat provocative piece. I wanted the music on this album to also talk about sexuality, to be a celebration of our bodies, to make us aware of our freedom in this sphere. Minha Flor also talks about the fact that we have the right to decide about our bodies - which is not so obvious in recent times. This is the "secret garden" within us that no one can take away from us.

You're right - feelings are hidden in Japanese culture. It's interesting that this is also the case in Switzerland - here some people also try to hide their feelings, they pretend they don't exist. All these emotions in my works are perhaps the influence of my Polish genes. However, among my friends and acquaintances I have many people with whom I can talk about my feelings. I try to do that and express my emotions through music as well.

Interviewee: Marek Romański 12/21