AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
If your life was a movie, what would it sound like? With influences from film directors Wong Kar-wai and Takeshi Kitano, that's the question 36-year-old French pianist and composer Sofiane Pamart is trying to answer in his latest album, "MOVIE."
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART'S "DIRECTOR'S CUT")
RASCOE: He joins us now from Munich. Sofiane Pamart, welcome to the program.
SOFIANE PAMART: Thank you. Thank you so much for hosting me.
RASCOE: So we just heard a little bit of "Director's Cut." Is that what this album is? - like, sort of a director's cut of the soundtrack of your life?
PAMART: It couldn't be said better, really. I've always dreamed of composing for movies in general. I wanted to give myself the whole freedom of composing for my own movie. This is what I did with this album, like if it was shooting one scene after the other one. So it starts with the sunrise, and it ends with the sunset.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART'S "SUNRISE IN YOUR EYES")
RASCOE: Can you kind of describe what this day is?
PAMART: So I tried to make a day that would look like a reflection of the life, you know, like you were born as a baby, and then you go through life until you are super old and just disappear, and you become something else. And this is, for me, a cycle that looks like a day, and what's happening in the end during this day is a lot of emotions. So all I'm focusing about is what is the emotional journey of someone. And obviously, I was inspired by my own emotional journey. What I often tell to myself is that, OK, for the two years and a half that I was recording this album, it was my movie, it was my life. But now that it's released, it's becoming, step by step, the soundtrack of people that are listening to it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART'S "SUNRISE IN YOUR EYES")
RASCOE: And were there any films in particular that were on your mind while you were making this record or any particular soundtracks?
PAMART: Mm-hmm. So I fell in love with all the work of Wong Kar-wai, which means "In The Mood For Love," "Fallen Angels." But I also liked the work of the director Kitano, the Japanese director that did "Hana-bi," also "Brother." What I love in this kind of cinema is that you have a lot of space to think for yourself because you contemplate many, many, many, many things, and you also can appreciate everything that is not said.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART'S "SUNRISE IN YOUR EYES")
RASCOE: When you're looking at this album as a day in the life but also, like, a journey of life, you have all of these kind of - I don't know if you want to call them characters or a cast. But basically, you have a lot of collaborators from across the globe, you know, featured on this album - J Balvin, Sia, Nelly, just to name a few. Why was it important for you to have so many different voices on this kind of soundtrack of life?
PAMART: The emotional journey of someone is influenced by the people he or she meets, and this is why I needed actors in this movie. On "Cinema," with FKJ, we wanted to explain things with two piano. So no voices, but only with two piano, and we wanted to paint how beautiful was the nature, like if it was cinema itself.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART AND KFJ'S "CINEMA")
PAMART: But all of them are deeply themselves. I wanted to show how you can find similarities when you listen to diversity. Indeed, on the paper, it's super diverse. But when you listen to them together in the movie, when you put them only on a piano - I don't know - there's something quite magical that happens and that makes all together feel that we are speaking about the same thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART AND KFJ'S "CINEMA")
RASCOE: You brought in the Prague Philharmonic Choir for the track "Your Inner World."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOUR INNER WORLD")
PRAGUE PHILHARMONIC CHOIR: (Singing in non-English language).
RASCOE: All of your collaborators, they have unique sounds, you know, especially this choir, but you found a connective tissue with these artists. What does that do for the album?
PAMART: I like to use music as something that try to capture something that is in the air but about human emotions. For example, "Your Inner World," I needed to have this choir of young, amazing children because I wanted to talk about death and grief because I lost a close friend, and I wanted to keep his inner world near me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOUR INNER WORLD")
PRAGUE PHILHARMONIC CHOIR: (Singing in non-English language).
PAMART: Each voice, each actor is able to explain something about the emotional journey we have as a human more perfectly than another one on one subject.
RASCOE: And the first collaboration that we hear on the album is with Wyclef Jean.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THERE'LL BE A DAY (FEAT WYCLEF JEAN)")
WYCLEF JEAN: (Singing) There'll be a day when love will conquer hate, truth will conquer lies. The soul is in your eyes.
RASCOE: You're known for bridging classical music and hip-hop, and this song definitely embodies that. What did Wyclef bring to this album? What was the thing that he was saying that no one else could say?
PAMART: Peace. Even the act of recording the song and the act of meeting each other - him and me - we wanted to represent, like, how to deeply love someone you just met.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THERE'LL BE A DAY (FEAT WYCLEF JEAN)")
JEAN: (Singing) Oh, by the water, but I ain't saved yet.
RASCOE: I mean, but it sounds very mournful, right? Like, it's a song about peace. Do you think that it's the human condition to be searching for peace but unable to get it?
PAMART: Yeah, definitely. We feel a lot of vertigo. Peace is something we can deeply desire, but so difficult to reach.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART'S "YOUR EYES ON SUNSET")
RASCOE: What is the story that you want people now to be taking from this album?
PAMART: Here you heard my own voice. When I express myself with music, I always express myself with my piano. And I say a lot of things through my piano, but I like to keep it secret so everyone can take it for themself and put their own life and own feeling on it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART'S "YOUR EYES ON SUNSET")
PAMART: In this album, from the first track to the last track, there is something that is always here, is the piano. So the piano is a kind of narrator. It goes from being with people and supporting the journey of other people, being the hero of my own journey. I start alone, and I finish alone. I start alone with "Sunrise In Your Eyes." I finish alone with "Your Eyes On Sunset." And this is what I love about the cycle of life. You start alone, and you finish alone, whatever happened in the whole journey.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART'S "YOUR EYES ON SUNSET")
RASCOE: That's Sofiane Pamart. His new album, "MOVIE," is out now. Thank you so much for joining us.
PAMART: Thank you. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the whole conversation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOFIANE PAMART'S "YOUR EYES ON SUNSET") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
