Jamie Cullum
Jamie Cullum is Britain's most successful pop-jazz artist, with over 10-million records sold. The 35-year-old singer-songwriter has obvious appeal: He intensely loves music, as evidenced by his hugely popular BBC2 radio show which can be heard in Canada on Toronto's Jazz.FM91. His passion for the music he plays on piano, backed by his ever-faithful touring band, causes his usually sold-out concerts to be raucous affair. Cullum closes the the TD Toronto Jazz Festival at Koerner Hall on Monday night before going on to play Ottawa on June 30 and the Montreal Jazz Festival on Canada Day. In advance of his mini Canadian tour, The Globe caught up with the jazz wunderkind to chat about life with Sophie Dahl, the British fashion model and granddaughter of author Roald Dahl, with whom he has two young daughters, his days as a DJ and why spontaneity is the best honesty when on the stage.
So I thought to ask a set list of questions except you don't like setlists. Can you talk about performing without a net, so to speak? Why is the absence of a setlist a key component of your performing style?
Spontaneity is important to me. To communicate on stage you have to give a lot of who you are and in order for me to give a lot of who I am on stage it needs to be pretty open. Having said that we're going to be performing with a big band so I am going to have to give them a rough idea of what we're doing! Or it's going to be a nightmare.
Jazz isn't your first love is it? Did you really learn about it from listening to hip hop?
Yes, I would say I really got the bug for jazz through hip hop. And I think as much as hip hip, it was that culture of record-collecting, that culture of trying to find things in charity shops that had cool beats on them and interesting chords and melodies that you could sample. I never really got into the whole world of sampling, although I have done a lot of that, but I certainly did the record-collecting part and hung out with groups of people who would DJ and make kind of bad hip hop music, and before I knew it I had this record collection bearing names like Herbie Hancock and Ornette Coleman and Grover Washington, Jr. and Bob James.
Speaking of loves, life with Sophie Dahl and your two young daughters must have you feeling outnumbered?
Even the cat's female.
Well we can talk about that another time, but what I'd like to know now is how has domesticity impacted you both as a man and as an artist?
It's caused a revolution in my mind, if I could use a cliché. It's been beautifully chaotic really. I find it really inspiring. People often talk about how important breakups are to write music. I think what that really means is that it's important to really feel stuff, intensely. Breakups make you feel. Having kids makes you feel. Starting a family gives you a life and new sense of self. It's lead me to be very bullish and very excited to take on risks. It's very exciting in the creative sense. Of course what it does to your personal life is amazing and crazy and indescribable. But from a purely creative sense it has done something very exciting for me.
Your weekly BBC2 jazz show: How has it shaped you as a performer?
It's the first day job I've had. It's great. It's this anchor. It brings me back behind the microphone to talk about other people's music. I think you can get really selfish when you are writing your own music, and just thinking about your own records all the time, your own performances. I think I was a good listener of radio for many years. I got into music first as a fan of music. I really identify with the listener.
What can follow 10-million records sold? What's next for you?
Well, yeah. I never think like that, which is probably a good thing. Really, you're only as good as the last thing you did, and at the moment I am actually really concentrating on a proper songwriter's record. I am writing it and producing it and recording it at home at the moment, and I really think, well I hope, this will be the best album of songs that I've ever written. I hope to finish that by the autumn, or the fall as you call it.
This interview has been edited and condensed