Q&A: Rozzi on Nurturing an Interdisciplinary Approach to the Arts
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY GIGI KANG ☆
Photo by Laura Schaeffer
ROZZI HAS ALWAYS PRESENTED AN ASSORTED BLEND OF SOUNDS — From soul to feel-good pop to acoustic indie to R&B elements to collaborations with artists across various genres, there have never been any rules.
Now, the LA-based singer-songwriter has partnered with the Ki Smith Gallery in New York City for a unique group show inspired by her upcoming album Fig Tree. 26 artists were invited to participate from over 500 global submissions. Each of the 13 tracks on Fig Tree will be represented by two different visual artists. The show marks a milestone in Rozzi’s efforts towards versatile collaborations.
The mixing of mediums is a key component of Fig Tree. Rozzi’s vision for the album can be credited to a literary root: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. She was reading the classic as she began the writing process, enabling her to reflect on themes of femininity, making important personal choices, and navigating the ever-evolving stages of life.
Every Thursday during the six-week run at the Ki Smith Gallery which starts on September 6, Rozzi will be on sight playing new material from Fig Tree alongside familiar favorites.
I spoke with Rozzi about the importance of connections between distinct mediums of art, the experience of working with 26 visual artists, the beauty of New York City, and new musical perspectives that shaped Fig Tree. Read our full conversation below.
Photo by Laura Schaeffer
LUNA: I’d love to hear about how a unique opportunity like this comes together. Did you know Ki previously?
ROZZI: It was a very kismet series of events. If you know me, you know how out of character this is because I’m such a home-bodied introvert, but I said yes to spending a weekend with [a group of] women outside of New York City. Lisa Bardin hosts this kind of summit for women. I didn’t have a lot of information on what I was stepping into, but I said yes.
I saw a painting in Lisa’s home and I loved it so much. I asked her where she got it and she sent me to Ki’s gallery. I met Ki and he showed me his event space. Simultaneously, completely separately, my manager met Ki also in a random kismet way. She saw the space and it was actually her idea to do a collaborative show between a visual artist and the record. Discussing the idea with Ki, he suggested doing an open-call show, which he does once a year, but he has never done something like this with a musician.
LUNA: It’s such a beautiful opportunity to have 26 visual artists interpret your musical vision through their individual perspectives. What impact has it had on you to have those conversations with them, hear their ideas, and see your art represented in a completely different way?
ROZZI: It’s one of the most incredible experiences in my career so far. I’ve been [speaking with] the artists and they live around the world, they’re from a million different walks of life, in all various stages of their life, of their career—and we’re discussing my most personal stories. It’s [talking about] these very intimate songs with a stranger, but it’s a stranger who happens to be gifted at expressing in a way that’s completely foreign to me.
As much as I am a fan of visual art, I have no skill. So it has been inspiring to hear the way these artists are interpreting my music and their ability to bring it to life in a way I could never dream. All the visual creations I make as an artist are so connected to my own life, to my own world. To have these artists from such different worlds impose their own experiences onto my personal experience—I’ve never had any experience like it.
I predict I’ll be very overwhelmed to be in the space surrounded by all the art that was inspired by my personal stories. It’s a once in a lifetime experience. I feel really lucky.
LUNA: Have you seen any of the work yet?
ROZZI: I have. I want them to have complete creative freedom, so some have chosen to show nothing which is really cool. I’m excited to be surprised. Some have already finished. They’re all extremely different from each other. It’s really interesting already.
LUNA: As a musician, are you typically seeking other mediums of art for inspiration?
ROZZI: It has evolved. When I first started out, I was so unbelievably ambitious that I was almost too focused on the end goal. I think I ignored a lot of art around me, which is the kind of mistake that I can’t believe I ever made! But [I was] 19 and had no doors in. I was so zeroed in on that door that I didn’t really appreciate the inspiration I was surrounded by. When I was working on my first record, I made a conscious effort to take in art in a really conscious way.
It started when I was doing collaborative shows with my friend Isabella Boylston who is one of the principal ballerinas at American Ballet Theater. She’s one of the best dancers in the world. We started creating shows together and that was my first taste of intersecting mediums. It made me feel unbelievable, so excited, and inspired that I actually think that’s maybe the theme of the release of this record. The Ki Smith Gallery is at the center of it, but I’m doing a million things wherever I can. I’m an avid reader. I’m obsessed with fashion. I love going to museums and seeing plays and movies and ballets. But now, I feel like the focus is even beyond that. It’s like, “How can I connect with these artists and create something brand new between the two of us?”
LUNA: It teaches you so much about yourself too, right? Other people’s perspectives. All of a sudden you’re like, “I didn’t even know that was possible about me.”
ROZZI: Totally. As a musician, I always feel like a song is actually the chemical reaction between me singing it and the person hearing it. The meaning exists in the middle. So it has been really fun to be on the other side and be the fan who is interpreting, experiencing somebody else’s creation, and realizing how much of a necessary piece of the puzzle I become as the listener and the viewer in the [same] way that I think of my audience a lot.
LUNA: You’ll be physically in the space every Thursday for the six weeks that the show runs which is another amazing opportunity to have that collaboration. Knowing you’re in a space that is inspired by the actual music you’ll be playing—does it have any effect on what you’re planning for those performances?
ROZZI: I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I feel like I won’t really know until I’m there. I was practicing the other day, and I was like, “Am I going to sing these differently once I’ve seen the pieces?” Because I could sing a song I wrote five years ago, and it changes. Always, the meaning and what comes out of me changes. I’m sure that I will be affected by the pieces, especially if I’m literally looking at them while I’m singing! How cool is that? I’m really curious to see how it affects me. I [also] wonder if these artists—who have been living with the record that inspired them—[will] rethink what they made [after seeing the music live.] I’m curious how that will go back and forth between us.
One thing I am consciously doing is different arrangements. We’re going to do one show that’s just strings. I’ve never done that before but I want to try because we’re in this experimental space. It’s totally different than when I go on tour. I’m also going to do shows [where it’s] just me and I’m playing guitar and piano which I don’t always do. I actually rarely do that, so that’s going to be a more intimate version of the performance. It’s six weeks so I feel like I’m going to do it once then have a million ideas, and the shows will change as I go.
Photo by Rebekah Campbell
LUNA: At the centre of the Gallery’s DNA is New York City. The New York art scene is to blame for Ki’s genius! What are your experiences or memories of art in the city, whether it’s shows you’ve played there or otherwise?
ROZZI: New York is the most inspiring place in the world. The first thing that comes to mind is certain images of me [in New York] that I wrote into a song. There’s a song called “Hard Things” on the record where I mention an intersection. My boyfriend made fun of me later because it turns out the intersection doesn’t exist. I said the wrong streets! But it’s poetry, so it’s fine (laughs). I see myself in the Lower East Side having this interaction that then made its way into a song that now has made its way into a painting of New York.
The shows I played in New York have been some of my favorites of my life. I remember the first time, I was probably 19. I played at Rockwood Music Hall. It was like six p.m. and no one was there, but one random stranger put a hundred dollar bill in the tip jar for us. I’ll never forget that because that’s such a New York thing. The fact that somebody could be walking down the street, just wander in, and this person could be successful enough to have a hundred dollar bill on them, and invested in the arts—that feels so New York to me.
The ballet comes to mind because of Isabella and the American Ballet Theater. That was another big honor of my career. My first time singing at The Met was with Isabella and actually a choir from Harlem sang with us.
LUNA: I want to ask about Fig Tree. The last album was Berry in 2022. I’m sure a lot has changed for you musically in the past three years. What new musical perspectives did you approach Fig Tree with?
ROZZI: The biggest difference between this record and any record I’ve done before is in the production. It has always been a goal of mine to make a record with a single producer, which seems like a goal that should be easier to fulfill but it never happened until now. I made Fig Tree with a producer called Mocky, who is brilliant. He’s produced pretty much all the Feist records which is a sound that really inspired me.
My whole life, people have told me—very well intentioned—that I’m “so much better live.” I appreciate that people love to see me live, and that is my favorite part of the musician’s experience, but the perfectionist in me is like, “Well, what are you trying to say about my recordings?” So the goal was, “How can I capture this kind of elusive live thing that people always say to me?”
To do that, we recorded a ton of it to tape. [For vocals,] I recorded simultaneously with Mocky playing instruments. He’d be recording bass and I’d be recording vocals at the same time so I could feel the musician behind the instrument the same way as a show. We did a lot of stuff with no click or the tempo changes throughout the song. It’s just looser, and that feels the most authentic to me.
LUNA: The last EP, Live From Home, was kind of like that.
ROZZI: Exactly. That was inspiring for this record too. I did [the EP] one afternoon [with] my friend Bryn Bliska who is actually going to music direct all the shows at the gallery. She’s amazing. We went to high school together and she has gone on to music direct with Jacob Collier and Maggie Rogers, and now she’s playing with Chappell Roan. We recorded [the EP] one afternoon in my living room, and I’m so proud of it. It is [usually] what I tell people to listen to out of all my music. For whatever reason, live just seems to translate who I am better. That certainly was something I thought of when I made Fig Tree.
LUNA: Does the title, Fig Tree, hint at anything like themes we might expect on the album?
ROZZI: It came from my favorite book, The Bell Jar. I was reading it while writing the record. There’s this pretty iconic stanza where the protagonist, Esther, talks about laying under a fig tree and each fig represents a different life she could live. She feels overwhelmed by the options. Sylvia Plath is quite the pessimist, and I am the ultimate optimist. I would say in her version, all the figs shrivel and die before she can choose one. That is not at all how I feel this record ends. It ends more uplifting, almost [with] a casualness to it. It’s like at the end of a lot of melodrama, there is lightness.
The original concept of feeling overwhelmed by choice and which life I’m going to lead was what I needed to read at that time in my life. I think the end of your 20s and early 30s is an incredibly intense time, especially for women because of “biological clock” fear mongering and feeling that some of your friends are getting married and having babies, some are getting promoted, some are traveling the world. Suddenly, everyone’s lives feel different and there’s a weight, at least for me. At some point, you have to make choices that define the rest of your life. That felt kind of devastating to me because there are so many things I want. [There were] questions of, “Is that greedy? Is that entitled? Is that normal?”
I read the book while I was also freezing my eggs which was an amazing thing that I was able to do, but also really challenging for me hormonally and existentially. So Fig Tree just felt like the title after reading that book. There’s also something very feminine about Fig Tree to me. Maybe there’s an Adam and Eve thing in my head which makes it feel feminine to me. It felt intrinsic to the very female point of view that this record is.
