A nice article on Sarah with some good quotes. They also use Yen's photo from beachfest.

http://www.uniter.ca/view.php?aid=39154


Issue 11, November 23rd, 2006

Arts & Culture
Sarah Slean - Keeping Things Simple
Aaron Epp
Sarah Slean performing live in Toronto. PHOTO: YEN
There's something to be said for keeping things simple. That's what Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah Slean thinks, anyway.

Slean has just released Orphan Music, a CD that is both a live and studio recording, showcasing stripped-down versions of her songs. The solo live performances were recorded in December 2005 in Toronto and Vancouver. The in-studio performances featuring only voice, piano, and string quartet were recorded at Toronto's DNA Studios and Kensaltown Studios in London, UK.

Orphan Music is Slean's fifth album, and the follow-up to 2004's critically acclaimed Day One. She is currently touring Canada in support of the CD, and will play the West End Cultural Centre Monday Nov. 27.

Slean says she released Orphan Music because fans have been asking for stripped-down versions of her previously released material for a while. The simplicity of the recordings was also inspired by the seven months she spent living in Paris, France this year.

"I sat in a small room with a white piano and reacquainted myself with the song, and its three parts: rhythm, chord, and melody," she says. "That's what drew me to songwriting in the first place: the simplicity, and how those three elements work together."

The UK recordings were engineered and produced by Martin Terefe (Ron Sexsmith, Yusuf Islam), while the Canadian recordings were produced by Slean and engineered by I Mother Earth guitarist Jagori Tanna.

In addition to writing and recording music, Slean paints, writes poetry, and has experimented with photography. She is hesitant to label herself a painter or photographer, though.

"I'm a musician, and would never profess to be any of those other things. I'm a songwriter, and what works in me are words and music. It's the union of those two things that I want to master. Painting and photography are just other facets of that same creative urge."

Slean once told an interviewer, "I really want to make great art. I'm obsessed with it." So what makes a work of art 'great'?

"If I knew that, I'd be a millionaire," she says. "Either that, or I would die in obscurity... I think a great work of art endures. It endures because it somehow resonates in our humanity. People will always need art I know this in my soul to be true. Humans are always asking questions like 'Why am I here?' I think the greatest art distils that and shows the longing of humanity. We'll never know the answers to many of life's questions, but it's the role of art to attempt to answer them nonetheless."

This is what Slean tries to do with her music.

"I'm constantly asking myself the hard questions. In trying to answer them, I can only look at my own life. It's like that quotation from Gandhi: 'You must be the change you wish to see in the world.' I think that's an appropriate analogy for what I do musically. I draw on personal experiences that hopefully resonate on a universal level."

Slean is hoping to record a new album next year, and the aim as with Orphan Music will be to do more with less.

"I'm a kid in a candy store when you give me options," she says. "In the past, I've become a bit of a mad scientist in the studio, trying different things. But, on the next album, I want to keep things simple. It takes courage to reign in every impulse. Maybe I'm not strong enough to do it, but maybe I am. We'll see."

See Sarah Slean perform at the West End Cultural Centre on Monday, Nov. 27th at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20.75 at Ticketmaster. You can visit her online at www.sarahslean.com.