Thomas Azier traveled the world and now lives in Paris. Yet he feels like a child of the North. On Wednesday, October 25, he will perform with the Noordpool Orchestra in Groningen. Earlier this year they already performed in Scheemda, at the Grasnapolsky festival. Then Jacob Haagsma spoke to Azier.
Thomas Azier lives in Paris with his girlfriend, their 1-year-old son and her daughter from a previous relationship – 14 years old. “An intense combination, I can say.” We do have something to discuss. Thomas Azier has released a beautiful new album, The Inventory Of Our Desire . And he makes a few special performances with the Noordpool Orchestra of Groningen Reinout Douma.
Thomas Azier, who was sent to Berlin in his first year at the Academy of Pop Culture in Leeuwarden to discover what kind of artist he actually is, who worked with people like Stromae, who wandered around the world and wrote the album along the way. Stray that Thomas Azier made, sought more connection with his roots in Friesland, in the North.
Cycling to school against the wind
He was born in Leiderdorp, grew up in Nijeberkoop and also lived in Groningen for a while before leaving for Berlin. Sobriety, cycling to school against the wind: that kind of thing. “A longing for Friesland, a collaboration with people from that area. That never left my heart, it kept coming up again and again.”
Azier came into contact with Reinout Douma through Elly van der Goot, brand new director of De Lawei theater in Drachten but then working at the culture department of the province of Friesland. He became enthusiastic and “overwhelmed” by Azier’s show in Groningen last autumn. “He understood what I was looking for.”
The collaboration came unexpectedly quickly, at the Grasnapolsky festival in March this year. The lines of communication are short: Mariska Berrevoets, business manager of the Noordpool Orchestra (formally based in Drachten for a long time), is also director of that festival. They will play together again on Wednesday, October 25, in De Oosterpoort in Groningen. And again a day later in Haarlem.
And what will that be? “I am very wary of the cliché of the indie singer with an orchestra behind him. I try to focus a lot on the musicians I have around me, the band. That’s the basics. Then I try to find a challenge with the orchestral arrangement, to add something.”
Two rehearsals, and then off we go
That includes improvisation, as well as the organic transition between acoustic and electronic. “I find that very interesting.” Azier, band and orchestra had two rehearsals for it, “and then off we went.” I love that tension.” In a sense, this project is an extension of The Inventory Of Our Desire , the plate. After all, he deliberately collaborated with musicians from different backgrounds.
After corona, after years of standstill in which physical playing together became almost impossible and his previous album Love, Disorderly disappeared into a static vacuum, he longed for that. Music as a form of human contact, as a collective experience.
That desire has grown more and more, he says, “because I am actually quite lonely in my musical practice. I like that, because I have control. But the older I get, the more I want to lose that control. Because that’s where the tension lies. I learned that from Tom Waits’ view: what you get when you put people together who apparently have nothing to do with each other.”
Take the extremely trained jazz saxophonist Maarten Hogenhuis, from Leeuwarden actually, versus Obi Blanche, guitarist from the punky avant-garde corner who will be concerned about the difference between minor and major and who will look at you glassy when you ask for a G minor seventh chord.
“He calls his guitar ‘the rake’ and he chops it until he gets a note. That’s not my background, but what he brings is this: he derails everything I put on track. And then you get something exciting. I want to challenge the people of the orchestra to do things with their instrument that are not obvious.”
Saxophonist Maarten Hogenhuis, an incredibly wise boy
Maarten Hogenhuis, among other things through his regular appearances in DWDD one of the most visible jazz musicians in the country, that Maarten, who has known Thomas Azier for a long time.
“An incredibly wise boy, his brain moves so incredibly fast, he is one of the most talented musicians I have played with in my life. He can, so to speak, hear which note a dog barks. Then you have a very interesting conversation with such an Obi, a musician who apparently has nothing to do with him. Maarten too, I played him things like Can and Neu!, or Gray [de postpunkband van de jong gestorven kunstenaar Jean-Michel Basquiat, red.]. Avant-garde things, things that grate, those out of tune are, which are not necessarily correct. Anti-musical. I wanted to convince him of my idea of European pop music, in which we draw inspiration from all kinds of music.”
Maarten Hogenhuis was mainly inspired by the minimalists. And so the beautifully blown sax circles were created in a kind of counterpoint with voice, in the immensely delicate Blue Eyed Baby. A lullaby for Azier’s young son.
That is the most intimate moment on a record, T he Inventory Of Our Desire So, who also does not rely on pathos and grand, theatrical gestures. And that sometimes turned out differently in the past.
Don’t fill in the blank, let it feel for yourself
A process of awareness, he says. “About the pathos, crying for the people, filling in all the emotions instead of them feeling it themselves and making room for it. I used to think less about that. I wanted to scream, I’m here, I want to be heard. I have less of that now. Music is a part of my life, but it is no longer the big shout of: here I am. More the abstraction.”
How important is that social aspect of making music? After the corona horror, Thomas Azier really sought friendship with musicians, especially instrumentalists. “People who appreciate my way of writing. A mix of poetry and prose, but also the performance aspect. Record it and don’t worry about it much anymore. Then you also need people who understand that language, who can think conceptually.”
And well, Northerners among themselves. Obi Blanche is a Finn. Or Nick Helderman, photographer and filmmaker with whom Azier regularly collaborates. He comes from Leeuwarden and now also lives in Paris.
Sanne Sannes, cult photographer from Groningen
Thomas Azier ended up there through his French wife, who influenced his life and work in several ways. “She opened all kinds of doors in my head. In the field of photography, cinema, visual arts. Also music, I must say.” That abstraction just now, which he tries to achieve by looking less for grand gestures? This is also due to the art that he discovers through his wife.
She is involved in the visual side of Azier’s work. That’s how she came up with the photo for the cover, of the Groningen cult photographer Sanne Sannes – who died in an accident in 1967, only 30. “It’s funny that he also comes from the North.”
This interview previously appeared on March 8, 2023.