Name: Sarah Chaksad
Nationality: Swiss
Occupation: Saxophonist, composer, improviser
Current release: Sarah Chaksad's new album Together is out via Clap Your Hands.
Recommendations: The Shaping Forces in Music by Ernst Toch; Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten by Arvo Pärt

If you enjoyed this Sarah Chaksad interview and would like to keep up to date with her work and music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Facebook. For an interview with one of her collaborators, read our Fabian Willmann interview. 



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?
 
I usually listen to music with my eyes closed. It often happens while playing my instrument, so that I can completely surrender to the overall sound without any visual distraction.

There is music that touches me emotionally in such a way that it immediately brings tears to my eyes, or there are sounds that make me nervous, or happy. I would say that music really does have a big influence on my emotions.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?
 
When I'm involved with music, I feel at home. I am strongly attracted by music that touches me deeply. When I listen to a tune, whether it is live or recorded, it is much more important that it touches me than that it impresses me.

Sometimes a very simple melody is played so deeply that it goes straight to my heart. I look for these sounds.
 
What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience?
 
My father played tombak and my mother is a classical musician. Melodies and sounds from different cultures were a natural part of my childhood and youth.

When I was five, my mother taught me how to play the flute and the piano. This free, playful, exploratory learning at home were the first important steps on my musical path, which shaped me as a person and musician, and still accompany me to this day.
 
According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

At that age, music was very important to me. I wasn't exactly a great student. At school, I was often bored and found it difficult to sit still for long periods of time. My friends and I soon started our first school bands, wrote our first songs and spent practically every free minute in our band room, that we built ourselves.

It was a very creative, relaxed time. A time of playfully creating music with friends without any pressure.
 
How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment?
 
I would describe it as very personal. I've been playing the same mouthpieces on my saxophones for over ten years. No matter which mouthpieces I tried, I kept coming back to the ones I had been using for so long.

In general, my instruments are another way for me to express myself. They are an extension of my body, my voice, so to speak. They are my tools to communicate what I feel.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?
 
My daily involvement with music is like a ritual; whether it's practicing the saxophone or composing, both activities ground me in a way. I often find inspiration in nature. I love spending time in the mountains, ideally in winter.

But another great source of inspiration for me are all the wonderful musicians out there in the world. I love discovering new players and their music, often listening to the same album several times in a row.

And of course, I try to go to concerts as often as possible. Hearing other musicians play live is always an inspiration.

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?
 
I would say that I am very organized in my daily life and that I plan things through as best as I can. I am very structured.

When making music, especially when it comes to improvisation, I can let go of this organized side of me, at least for a large part. At that moment, I love the spontaneity, the risk and, of course, the lack of planning. I enjoy creating in the moment.

In that sense, I would say that music allows me to acknowledge another side of me that usually gets less room in everyday life.
 
If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?
 
I definitely believe that music is a language. When we make music, we can communicate, respond to each other, listen to each other - no matter what culture we come from.

I see this universal language of music as a great joy, freedom and also an opportunity.
 
In general, I always try to clear up misunderstandings as quickly as possible. I am not good at enduring interpersonal disharmony.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with? 

I still try to approach music playfully and with curiosity. As a child, I could spend hours playing with the same toy and I only left my own world when my parents came into the room asking me to join them at the dining table.

I always try to recapture this feeling of immersion, you could also call it flow, when practicing or composing. It often happens that I forget everything around me when I'm in flow, even to eat, and I only leave this bubble many hours later.

This playful discovery gives me a great sense of security that, in a way, nobody can take away from me.
 
Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?
 
About 5 years ago, I was on tour in the far North of Norway, in Finmark. I was standing right by the sea at a temperature of minus 25 degrees, looking out into the cold, pitch dark night. It was such an incredibly magical moment. This mixture of silence, the mystical sound of the sea and the wind. I felt one with nature.
 
Musically, I would describe this moment as very calm with lots of reverb, space and time. And although it was indescribably cold, I could hear a warm, harmonious sound. A lovely world of sound in which not much is actually happening.
 
There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?
 
Numbers and figures can be found everywhere in music. Time signatures, bar numbers, rhythmic figures, distances between notes, etc. But when we hear different musicians playing the same melody, notated in exactly the same way, we very often still feel a difference.

Why does it affect me so much when one person plays this melody but I feel nothing when listening to the other?
 
How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?
 
I find that people in the audience can sense when I make honest, straightforward, authentic music. Music that I enjoy playing. When I am myself on stage and I don't try to copy or imitate someone else.
 
Now I also try to translate that into my everyday life and want to be tangible for my fellow human beings. I want them to be able to read me.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?
 
Music and sounds are actually almost always a pleasure for me. But there is one activity where I can't listen to music. And that's when I'm eating.

I always turn the music off while enjoying a meal. Eating and listening to music at the same time is difficult. I feel so distracted by the music - often because it is so beautiful that I am more focused on the music - that I lose my appetite.
 
Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?
 
I believe that music helps me to a certain extent to process things. These can be tragic incidents or more trivial things. What comes out of you in music is like a mirror of yourself.

It can't always be 100% planned but especially in improvisation, you spontaneously express things that may suddenly surprise you.
 
If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?
 
In general, I hope that music will continue to evolve and that musicians will have the courage to express themselves authentically and honestly.

And I hope that live music always keeps its importance, and that it will ideally become even more important in the future.