Geoff: 0:00

Hello podcats! Geoff Gascoyne here. Today I'm in Croydon in south London and it's a beautiful spring day and I'm on my way to see a wonderful young singer and trumpet player, Freddie Benedict.

Announcement : 0:28

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Geoff: 0:44

Hello,

Geoff: 0:44

mate, Freddie Benedict, how are you? Hey?

Geoff: 0:45

Geoff.

Freddie: 0:46

Gascoyne, I know Come on in. I love the shorts.

Geoff: 0:48

Thank you.

Freddie: 0:49

Sorry, I may be at a game of tennis for my gig. How lovely to see you mate, yeah, good to see you. Can I get you a coffee, a cup of tea would be amazing.

Geoff: 0:56

Thank you, a cup of tea, yeah.

Freddie: 1:02

Right, a cup of tea.

Geoff: 1:03

Well, thank you for inviting me around to your lovely house. Yeah, so we're in south London, in Croydon. Have you always lived here? This is where you grew up.

Freddie: 1:10

Yeah, I moved here when I was 12. So I'm originally from Wandsworth, south west London, but I went to school here and moved here for the school and, yeah, it's very nice that my mum has given me the dining room today. Fantastic.

Geoff: 1:27

Fantastic and you studied I read some of you were. Were you a choral singer? Is that how you got started in music?

Freddie: 1:34

That's right, yeah, so when I was eight years old I joined a local church choir in south London which kind of got me into just general singing and the idea of being a community and being as one, which was lovely and yeah, that kind of spiraled into taking part in lots of fun music activities. At school I went to school in Croydon. I went to a brilliant place called Trinity School which has an excellent music department not to be confused with Trinity Laban in Greenwich, slightly different but um but uh. But yeah, we had a. I had a fantastic time there and I did lots of choral music and then towards the end of my time started taking a bit more of an interest in jazz and uh you know you were always reading music, like you did read music from quite an early age.

Freddie: 2:23

I got a music scholarship at my school, uh, kind of based on potential more than anything else, but I actually couldn't read any music. I had I happened to have like a, I guess, like a decent ear, but I really couldn't read anything. And and at the time I remember my parents turned around to the head of music, uh, David Swinson, and my dad in particular was really worried because he said, oh, my kid doesn't read music. Is this going to be a problem, you know, in terms of choral singing and? And he said no, no, all the guys that come in, all the young lads that are 10 and 11, um, it's, it's kind of highly unusual if they do have any reading skills before coming. But rest assured, rest assured, Mr Benedict, I'll make sure your, your kid, can read music in three years.

Freddie: 3:00

And that's exactly what happened wow so it took me sort of three and a half years of, I want to say, grueling training, but it wasn't because it was an absolute pleasure, um, but uh, just lots of sight singing and reading and identifying chords and lots of aural training. Yeah, it was a, it was a great skill to have, and I'm very uh thankful that I I'm able to sort of use that in my work, because you play trumpet as well.

Geoff: 3:21

When did that?

Freddie: 3:22

start Trumpet. I started at primary school, actually when I was about four or five. Obviously, I started on a cornet because my hands and arms were too small. I actually couldn't play on a trumpet.

Geoff: 3:34

Did you enjoy the trumpet at that age?

Freddie: 3:36

I did. Yeah, I had a fantastic teacher, really, really nice guy, who I'm still in touch with, actually to this very does a lot of West End shows. A lovely guy called Toby Coles and, uh, he was my teacher at primary school and that's when it all started, sort of 24 or 5 years ago and you just kept the trumpet going all the way through your schooling, did you?

Geoff: 3:56

or did you stop at any point?

Freddie: 3:57

pretty much. No, I carried on, yeah, primary school and secondary school. Then I stopped it for a little bit, just because I went to uni for my undergrad and I didn't study music for my undergrad although I kept it up, didn't practice as much, and then sort of in my early 20s, because trumpet is a thing you need to keep up, don't you?

Geoff: 4:17

You can't just let it go, can you?

Freddie: 4:19

It's really difficult. Yeah, the embouchure and technique and everything and as they call it, your chops. You've got, yeah, the embouchure and technique and everything. And, as they call it, your, your chops. You got to make sure your chops are intact. Um, but I think it it complements my singing beautifully, both in terms of how I improvise, how I approach any song or any standard. Yeah, um, I think the two go go hand in hand do you always play trumpet on your gig?

Geoff: 4:39

if you have your own gigs, you play play trumpet as well, do you?

Freddie: 4:42

yeah, especially with my originals gigs. I think I had this fear in my early 20s and for a few years, of worrying about playing trumpet on gigs, simply because there are so many brilliant trumpet players who are far better than me so, oh, come on. So I thought, um, I kind of had a few years of just not really wanting to play because I got a bit nervous on gigs, but now I've kind of, yeah, got beyond that and it's just the joy of playing it, that's kind of all that matters.

Geoff: 5:06

Was that a technical thing, do you think, because you didn't feel like you had enough technique, or what was that?

Freddie: 5:11

Yeah, I think it was technique and rustiness and just kind of you look at someone like Chet Baker.

Geoff: 5:18

I mean he plays a lot of the time, especially in his later life. He would play very simple, wouldn't he? A lot of the time, especially in his later life, he would play very simple, wouldn't he?

Freddie: 5:24

Simple stuff, but very lyrical and beautiful stuff, and that's kind of what I try and incorporate in my playing You're the new Chet Baker. Well, I try to be.

Geoff: 5:33

You're 29?.

Freddie: 5:34

I've just turned 29,. Yeah, 29. Wow, I'll be 30 next year. I think that's still young. It is young. That's about. Yeah, that's half my age. My age, wow, that's amazing. Yeah, no, 30 next year. You studied, didn't you? You went? Where did you go to college? For my undergrad, I went to King's College, London, and studied spanish and portuguese but did lots of music on the side.

Freddie: 5:56

So I did lots of choral singing, I was in big bands, I was in uh sang in an acapella group for a year and traveled around the world but that which was fun, and I kind of realized halfway through my uni degree that I really I think music was sort of the way to go.

Geoff: 6:09

But you love languages, obviously, and I love languages.

Freddie: 6:11

Yeah, and I actually spoke to my music department at school. I had a real conundrum about it and I didn't know what to do. And I spoke to one of the music teachers who was the happened to be the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2002. She was a prolific oboist called Liz Cooling. Miss Cooling now Mrs Regan and I was having a bit of a dilemma and I said I think I should try and straddle between both. Do you think that's the right idea? Should I do a language degree and keep up the music, or shall I just go straight into music? And she said no, I think, keep both your options open yeah and as did my other music teacher, the head of music there.

Freddie: 6:48

He said the same thing, um, and I think with hindsight it was definitely the right decision. It was only really in my second or third year at King's London that I I kind of realized that the degree was not really what I wanted to do and I kind of wasn't into academia that much and really wanted to go in just to the playing side of things. But obviously, having done a Portuguese degree and I'm lucky in that I now speak Portuguese that has been a fantastic thing in terms of getting into Brazilian music and learning, all that yeah fantastic Jobim repertoire and all that Fantastic.

Geoff: 7:19

yeah, yeah, but I went to Guildhall. You went to Guildhall on a jazz degree.

Freddie: 7:23

On a jazz degree yeah, but I went to Guildhall. You went to Guildhall on a jazz degree. On a jazz degree yeah. So I did two years there. It ended up being about two and a half because of the pandemic, but yeah, it was great fun, I really enjoyed it. Fantastic, and now you're out in the world earning a crust.

Geoff: 7:36

How's that going? That's the plan. Yeah, so far so good. You know, keeping the world earning a crust, how's that?

Freddie: 7:43

going. That's the plan. Yeah, so far, so good. You know, keeping the wolf from the door, You're working a lot. Yeah, I think I'm keeping fairly busy. I'm lucky in that. I can. You know, as my mum would say, I can sing for my supper, which?

Geoff: 7:57

is good, and I saw somewhere that you do ADR as well. You do sort of voiceovers and things like that.

Freddie: 8:02

Yes, that's right.

Geoff: 8:04

How did that happen?

Freddie: 8:05

So my parents are in the film business. My late father was an actor, my mum trained as an actress, and, and together they met later on in life and together they formed a post-production company which effectively finds talent for background voices in film and TV, and it's the final layer of sound. It's a very niche field. ADR, for those who don't know, stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement.

Geoff: 8:32

And I basically got into that. So you're basically lip syncing. You see something, you're lip syncing on someone else.

Freddie: 8:37

Yeah, I mean it can be lip syncing. It can be a little bit more general than that. It could just be that you see a group of people in the background of a scene where they're not important and you're just making up a little bit of dialogue, improvising kind of like I do in jazz. That's why I quite like doing both of those things, because Can you give us an example of that?

Freddie: 8:59

It's, it's tricky, I mean, it just depends. I could so, like, say you're in a, you're in a restaurant, for example, yeah, and there are the main characters talking, and in the back, let's say, there are two. You know, yeah, two guys talking in a cafe, be like, oh, I don't know. Did you see the result of the weekend? Yeah, the regs didn't do very well, did they? Yeah, you know two. One, yeah, I was a big guy at the party. What do you want, mate? You want to have a coffee.

Freddie: 9:16

You know, it's just literally random stuff like that, yeah, which they just ask you to improvise and they just ask you it's a bit like Whose Line Is it, Anyway? that UK US show where they just get you to go and improvise dialogue? Here we're in this scene, but then it might be that we're in a different country. So sometimes all my accents and impressions because one of the kind of side hustle things I do is that I do yeah, I do accents and I imitate people, um, for fun, um, can you give us an example of that? Uh, yeah, I'm just trying to think of which, uh, political leader I can do without triggering anybody. Yeah, no, I think the the one that comes to mind I I started during covid. I started doing impressions and set up an insta page and and I was actually doing Boris Johnson and yes, doing stuff like that.

Freddie: 10:01

And then, of course, if we go into the Orange Croissant Guy, Mr Trump, who's a very unpopular person at the moment, that kind of thing. I love jazz. I love Blue Bossa. Blue Bossa Beautiful. I know Mr Blue Bossa very well, very good friend of mine, beautiful person.

Freddie: 10:15

Yeah, that kind of thing.

Geoff: 10:16

Do you have a home studio set up? You record voiceovers at home, or do you always go into studios?

Freddie: 10:21

Usually I tend to go into studios and we're quite lucky there are lots of the kind of world of post-production ADRs, all in Soho. So with kind of they call it the sort of Golden Mile. It's like a radius of all these different post-production places. So I go there. And it was only during COVID where they found a way of doing remote recording through a software called Clean Feed and I was able to record from home for two years during the pandemic. Fantastic Fantastic.

Geoff: 10:48

You run your own band, do you? You hustle for your own gigs and you write your own music.

Freddie: 10:53

That's right. Yeah, so one of the things to have come out of, you know, COVID was a difficult time for everybody and one of the things that got me through my challenging period was starting to write music and write lyrics. And that came to me a little bit later than my fellow peers and I started getting into it and it's been a long process, but I'm actually happy to announce that I've started recording my first seven tracks a couple of years ago. I've just shot some music videos for three of the songs, which is really exciting.

Freddie: 11:26

I've got another three songs to record in the studio and then I'm going to have my first album. So the plan is hopefully before or maybe around my 30th birthday I can mark it with a nice album, hopefully that people will enjoy and actually get to know the real me. Because you know, as you sort of mentioned there, yeah, I do hustle, like everyone has to hustle for gigs, and you know I'm able to play in lots of nice places and that's great because that's Freddie Benedict performing songs from the great American songbook and standards.

Freddie: 12:00

I should say A kind of crooner, a kind of croonery vibe exactly, you know the sort of poor man's Michael Bublé or whatever it is that you want to call me. And then now I kind of want to get into this world where people actually get to know the real Freddie Benedict in terms of what he brings to the table with his own music, and I think that will be a really interesting step for me in my career. And yeah, I think that's kind of the next thing that I want to hit and hopefully something comes of it.

Geoff: 12:29

Yeah, we'll have to wait and see. And is that stylistically in the sort of realm of jazz, or is that because it's original music?

Freddie: 12:43

Have you got any kind of influences that you could see in that or hear in that music? Yeah, I mean it's, it's, I would definitely say it kind of hits that contemporary jazz bracket, just in terms of the kind of jazz pop crossover. So I think there's a little bit of everything for everyone, which is nice. I think what's been good about the, about the original gigs that I've done, is that everyone has kind of left the venue liking at least one or two songs because it's their taste. So I have a couple of tunes that are fairly straight ahead. I got some kind of Brazilian tunes, Brazilian-themed tunes, Brazilian-esque. I also have some more kind of R&B, neo-soul, groove tunes, which I'm really into. Can't wait to hear this. Yeah, kind of R&B, neo-soul, groove tunes which I'm really into.

Geoff: 13:19

Can't wait to hear it.

Freddie: 13:19

So that's, it's kind of I don't know, it's got a bit of. Someone told me that it was kind of smatterings of Stevie Wonder with the vocal prowess of Kurt Elling, mixed with Michael McDonald harmonies, Whoa. So that was a really nice thing to hear.

Geoff: 13:33

Amazing.

Freddie: 13:33

So, I kind of I thought, yeah, I'll do that.

Freddie: 13:35

Yeah, take that, absolutely I don't quite sound like Michael McDonald, you know.

Freddie: 13:38

Back. Welcome back to you yeah.

Freddie: 13:41

Yeah, it's not quite.

Freddie: 13:44

I just got to do the beard. You've got to go. Yeah, forget, forget. I'm not in love anymore.

Freddie: 13:50

Yeah, brilliant, not quite like that.

Geoff: 13:58

When did you start improvising and how did you gain vocabulary and how did you get to where you are now?

Freddie: 14:08

So it all started when I was at school. I was 15, 16. I had a fantastic teacher called Michael L Roberts who I owe such an awful lot to. He's a top, top guy from Wales and he still is a jazz musician in his own right. And when I started getting into jazz age 15 or 16, I learned it was Kurt Elling's rendition of Nature Boy that got me into jazz. That was the first 15 or 16, I think I absolutely loved it, um obsessed with it. I started just by trying to increase my repertoire of standards. So I got the I real book without the lyrics and my homework every week was I'd have to, I'd have to write out the lyrics of a standard and then I'd have to learn it off book so that for the next lesson you have something so it wasn't notated.

Freddie: 14:52

You're just talking about lyrics and just learning tunes by ear yeah, that's, that's kind of how it started, um, so I would have you know the notes there and and the chord symbols above, but without any words, and that was just a kind of good way of learning and memorizing lyrics.

Freddie: 15:05

That's how I started. And then, in terms of, uh, improvisation, you know, we we'd start with, which actually I ended up doing in a lot of detail at um, at Guildhall, with Gareth Lockrane crane, who is another legend in his own lunchtime, we did a fantastic thing where we'd go through all the guide tones. I'd start with just all the bass, so I would sing all of the bass notes. So I kind of not in a particularly advanced way, age 16, but later, in my kind of early 20s, I kind of tried to channel my inner Bobby McFerrin. So I would then end up doing things like playing to Ireal backing tracks without the bass part, so it would just be piano and drums and then I'd just sing the bass, I'd just scat the bass notes and then eventually, once I knew the scales within each chord progression, I would then start to expand on all of that and have more, let's just say, interesting vocab.

Geoff: 15:59

Yeah, so building your way up the triads, I guess, and just using different notes and trying to link them. Of course, that's much more difficult for a vocalist, isn't it? Because you can't just press a key. Did you find that difficult? I guess from your choral training you had good ear and aural skills, did you?

Freddie: 16:22

Yeah, I definitely think the choral skills came in handy, just in terms of having, yeah, decent intonation and a good tonal centre and finding the notes and also hearing the notes. I remember we had a masterclass when I was at school with a fantastic euphonium player called Oren Marshall. I know Oren Marshall and I remember him saying to me… Oren Marshall played.

Geoff: 16:37

He played tuba on the Jamie Cullum's first album.

Freddie: 16:41

Oh right, he was the tuba player.

Freddie: 16:44

Oh was he.

Freddie: 16:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah Great.

Freddie: 16:46

I mean he won't remember me because obviously I was a 15 year old school kid from Croydon, yeah, so, but if he's listening to this, yeah, he was fantastic in this masterclass. He came to adjudicate a competition, yeah, but he had this thing about when you, when you sing a note, whether you're playing or singing, always hear the note in your head before you sing it, because that will help you with your pitch and your tone and your tonality and tonal center, and I never forgot it. So every, and whether it was playing a note on the trumpet, which maybe I had more difficulty with than singing, that was always the thing. So, if I always the thing. So, whether you have an accompaniment in a piano part and you're trying to find your note, that was one of the things I struggled with for a year or two was kind of hearing the piano part and going is it?

Freddie: 17:28

la, la la. And I was kind of doing a lot of that.

Freddie: 17:31

Whereas Oren said just hear the note, you know what the note is, have it in your head and then sing it and you'll never get it wrong.

Geoff: 17:37

And and he was right. o it Now it now it brings us nicely onto the Quartet apps an upgrade on the ireal reel which is a y massive upgrade on you.

Geoff: 17:51

So we're about to maybe by the time this comes out, volume three and four are coming out amazing. So there's another 200 standards, the next two, so in total that's that'll be 500 standards available in Quartet one, two, three and four. There's a new um playlist feature so you can, inside any of them, you can see all 500, search them by keywords like composer, by performer, so on, by instrument. You you're aware of the Quartet apps.

Freddie: 18:18

I am, yeah, I only started getting into them recently to be honest, but I was like wow, these sound way better. It's like an actual live band.

Freddie: 18:26

It really is, and you all sound killing.

Freddie: 18:27

I was like I need to use these way more often.

Geoff: 18:30

Quartet way to go. So Quartet is the way to go. So what we're going to do? You're going to pick a tune, a standard. Maybe you can demonstrate some of those improvising techniques. I'll get you to sing two choruses, if that's okay. Which standard have you picked for today?

Freddie: 18:43

I've picked, uh, because of my love of the Lusophone world and all things Brazilian, I'm picking One Note Samba, otherwise known as Samba de Uma Nota Só O by j, so you're going to sing it you're going to sing in portuguese? Portuguese

Geoff: 18:56

uh, I can do. Yeah, yeah, okay. So we're technically not actually using the tune. So, if you bear that in mind, we can get around it. I'm just going to play the beginning, so start with the last eight, I'll stop it. I just want you to just give me a brief. Maybe you could sing the roots or something. Yeah.

Freddie: 19:15

I could sing the roots. Yeah, because talking about the, the bass, how my improv was helped by singing all the bass notes just sing us a chorus.

Geoff: 19:23

Sing us a chorus using the roots and maybe some of the other tones or something how you just demonstrate how you can get away from it just sounding like you're singing the roots, yeah, yeah absolutely yeah, yeah, we'll give it a go. So we'll have a sound check. So this is the last eight. Okay, okay.

Freddie: 20:06

And then there's one, two, here we go, that's nice. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do do do, do.

Freddie: 20:42

Something like that. No, that's great.

Geoff: 20:44

That's really great, yeah, but obviously there's a lot of other stuff in there. I mean, there was a couple of moments where you kind of crept up, you went up da, da, da, da da. You went up the scale.

Freddie: 20:54

Yeah, a little scale there just up a fifth. But yeah, I was sort of trying to sort of, I guess, impersonate how a bass player would.

Geoff: 21:02

Yeah, I was gonna say that yeah yeah, yeah fantastic. Yeah, but there's loads of jazz just inside that. Yeah, but obviously you need to know the harmonies in order to do that, don't you? You need to study, and do you sit at the piano and learn harmony, or how? What's your method for learning harmony in a new tune, for example?

Freddie: 21:20

It's a mixed bag, to be honest. I mean I'll always listen to the record. That's like the number one thing listen to the record before anything. And then, once I've got a rough idea as to how the melody goes, then I'll sit down at the piano and I mean I'm a proficient piano player. I'm never going to say I'm a good player because I'm not, but I can get around a piano and play all the chords and the voicings and then kind of work out where it's going.

Freddie: 21:43

What's great about this particular song like a lot of the classics like Girl , From Ipanema and all the other kind of brilliant Brazilian tunes is that it's a bossa nova chord progression that's iconic but has a sort of twist on the classic three, six, two, five chord progression yeah so instead of using the three, six, two, five, he likes to use, uh, tritone, yeah, substitutions for the six and five chords yeah which is which is really cool, and it gives you that descending motion, doesn't it?

Freddie: 22:15

yeah, that, yeah, that, that's great, that's a really cool.

Freddie: 22:20

It's really nice. Yeah, really nice thing to listen to and nice thing to sort of get into.

Geoff: 22:25

But of course you can. You don't have to sing that. When you're singing extensions you can actually refer to the more traditional two fives, can't you, I guess, when you're?

Freddie: 22:33

improvising. I love the fact that you've got that descending sequence and yet you can have that articulated dominant pedal on the F. You know, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, yeah, and that F just fits beautifully underneath those four chords. It's really cool. It's really nice, really really cool.

Geoff: 22:47

Hence the title. One Note Samba, right, yeah, of course. Yeah, would you time? Whatever you like, you don't need to sing words, but just something else what you might do on a chorus of this tune, sure?

Freddie: 22:59

I can, I can sort of I can, I can crank the level up a little bit yeah, just in terms of the, the, the difficulty level. Oh yes, if I can sort of get the ante a little bit.

Geoff: 23:08

Absolutely, you can up the ante as much as you want to if I've had a couple of kind of level. Yeah, great, okay so this is one is one chorus, with the last eight as your introduction. Yeah, that's a beautiful Graham Harvey introduction. It has all of them on this one. Here we go.

Freddie: 24:23

Good old Graham. Thank you there you go.

Geoff: 24:25

Yes, oh, sorry, I pressed the wrong one.

Freddie: 24:31

I know it was a joke. It was a joke of a solo, was it? I pressed.

Geoff: 24:36

Sorry, I pressed laughter right, I should have pressed this oh yeah thank you so much.

Freddie: 24:41

Thank you really great. Thank you. One Note Samba love the guy, he's a great guy fantastic, yeah, oh, such great stuff in there.

Geoff: 24:52

That's amazing. I'd love to hear just a little bit of you singing Brazilian. Yes, if possible, do a little. Just give us to hear just a little bit of you singing in Brazilian. Yes, if possible, do a little.

Freddie: 24:58

Just give us a little taste, a little section.

Geoff: 24:59

A little taste For my sessão.

Freddie: 25:01

Yeah For the Brazilian listeners.

Geoff: 25:03

It's such a beautiful language, isn't it? It's beautiful, gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

Freddie: 25:06

It's incredible. Have you spent any time in Brazil? Yeah, I did for a week with one of my best friends and we went to. We went to Rio and did kind of all the touristy things and then just listened to live music in the streets and it was just incredible. Went to this fantastic district called Lapa, which is basically a place where there's you just walk to any corner of any bar and there's live music outside and it's just amazing. Just Brazilians just have natural groove and rhythm and just amazing people. Yeah, fabulous, olé, olé, obrigado, obrigado, Geoff.

Geoff: 25:55

I hear in a lot of that bossa nova. They're pre-phrasing, aren't they? They're phrasing quite ahead. You know? Listen to João Gilberto and he's and it's amazing when you hear him play and he's you know him playing solo guitar and singing. His vocal is way ahead, isn't it? Of the?

Freddie: 26:15

guitar. It's awesome. It's very hip to kind of start a phrase on the four and before you know, yeah.

Geoff: 26:20

I mean, people don't do that very much in in western music, do they? Yeah, it's the.

Freddie: 26:30

I love all that.

Geoff: 26:31

It's great. It's really cool. I loved it. I've got some little quick fire questions. Okay, to finish off, yeah, what's your favourite album?

Freddie: 26:44

I know that's a difficult question, but it is a difficult question, but for me it would be Stevie Wonder Songs In The Key Of Life oh excellent 1976 for me. I even have a t-shirt of that album. I love it so much it's for me, just a beautiful have a t-shirt of that album. I love it so much. It's for me, just a beautiful piece of art and incredible work and they call him the eighth wonder of the world for a reason.

Geoff: 27:03

Yeah.

Freddie: 27:03

And I saw him live in Hyde park and it was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. He did the whole album back to front. Aisha came out you know from, Isn't She Lovely? Life is Aisha, yeah, yeah, um, his son came out played drums. Uh, it was. That was just an amazing, amazing. It just reaffirmed everything that I thought about Stevie Wonder. He's. I think he's the greatest. Some, some of the some of the kids nowadays refer to people as GOATs.

Geoff: 27:25

I think Stevie's- the G GOAT, he he he G ATO he really is. He wrote something like 100 tunes for that album. Can you imagine? And and there's another story of him going into one London the big studios in london, just locked in, just just left him there. He stayed there all night, came out and he'd written 15 tunes overnight. It doesn't surprise me at all.

Freddie: 27:43

It doesn't surprise me at all, I'd love to hear those tunes, wouldn't you?

Geoff: 27:45

Oh, incredible, Okay, second question who's your favourite musician, alive or dead? You'd love to play with Wow.

Freddie: 27:55

Oh wow, oh wow. Oh, my goodness, I guess I could narrow it, whittle it down to a few people. There's, I guess, in the more sort of contemporary world, male musicians and vocalists that stand out for me just in terms of what I loved listening to growing up maybe possibly Stevie Wonder and maybe James Taylor, the slightly different singer-songwritery perspective.

Freddie: 28:14

Yeah.

Freddie: 28:16

I'd love to sing with any of them, but then maybe in the jazz world, because he's my vocal jazz, different singer-songwriter-y perspective. Yeah, I'd love to sing with any of them, but then maybe in the jazz world, because he's my vocal jazz hero, Kurt Elling. I'd love to, just I'd love to like, absolutely rip into a piece of music with him, with a big band, and just have like a big scat fest or something.

Geoff: 28:30

Have you met Kurt?

Freddie: 28:31

before. Yeah, a couple of times I mean not you know, only just to sort of say hi and well done and great gig and blah, blah. I mean I'm actually going with my girlfriend in May to see him at Ronnie's Super Blue Funk Project. Oh yeah, killing with Charlie Hunter, with Charlie Hunter, yeah which is always good.

Geoff: 28:48

Oh, my God.

Freddie: 28:50

Managed to get some tickets for that, which is good. Amazing, amazing. But yeah, probably one of those three. Hard t owhittle whittle whittle to to whittle. Hard to whittle it down, really Okay.

Geoff: 28:57

Next question what was the last concert you attended?

Freddie: 29:00

Ooh, okay, so there's one that's kind of, I'll say one that was a small setting and one that was a large setting. The small setting was a couple of weeks ago I got a couple of tickets a family friend pulled out to see the Brazilian guitarist, Plinio Fernandez, who I know of is an absolutely amazing, incredible musician who did the works of a Brazilian composer called Heitor Villalobos.

Geoff: 29:25

I love Villalobos. Yeah, I play some of his classical guitar music Amazing beautiful, beautiful musician and composer.

Freddie: 29:30

And.

Freddie: 29:30

Plinio is an amazing musician. You must check him out.

Freddie: 29:34

I do, so I went to see him and he was outstanding, just him and his guitar. One hour beautiful, very mellifluous playing. And then I would say on the large scale. I went to the Hammersmith Apollo a couple of months ago. I went to see I don't know how you would describe them, but they're called Hiatus Coyote. They're an Australian kind of psychedelic funk. Some people would call it psychedelic funk, some people would call it alternative, but it's got a lot of neo-soul vibes featuring an amazing vocalist called Napalm. She goes by the name of Napalm and they're an Aussie outfit from Melbourne. Yeah, those are the two I went to see.

Geoff: 30:09

Really cool. Very different, but great Quite diverse. Yeah, so it's great that you have very diverse and open-minded tastes.

Freddie: 30:17

Yeah, I love that.

Geoff: 30:18

That's fantastic. What would you say is your musical weakness?

Freddie: 30:23

Good question. What is my musical weakness? Maybe sometimes, if I get so involved in listening to the music that my brain can be quite distracted, because I'm just loving how everyone else is playing and I go oh my God, where are we in the song? What am?

Geoff: 30:41

I doing? When do I get back in? So maybe maybe me being distracted or just, or maybe you forget what the changes are.

Freddie: 30:43

You forget listening to the, to the form, I forget listening to the form, not because I'm incapable just because I'm loving what they're all doing on stage and then I go oh uh, when am I coming in? So that's maybe my um. Yeah, they used to call me Freddie and the Dreamers at school for that reason.

Announcement : 30:55

That's great, that's a good answer.

Freddie: 30:56

That's probably my musical weakness is getting distracted by how brilliant my band is, yeah. Or when I do functions and I just completely forget because I'm just in awe of these brilliant musicians I get to play with week in, week out. Do you ever get nervous on stage? Not as much as I used to, but I think everyone would be lying. Even the great musicians would be lying if they didn't say that they had natural nervous energy. I think it depends on the nature of the gig. I think one that particularly came to mind it's a, I guess, a little bit of a clang, but I was very fortunate enough. last September I performed at the BBC Proms. I saw that yeah, the music of Henry Mancini.

Freddie: 31:32

Amazing, amazing, amazing concert and program and great to work with Edwin Outwater, the conductor, and got to sing alongside some fantastic singers and fellow friends of mine. But that was kind of nerve-wracking just because it was a huge hall and, uh, you know, playing in front of such an occasion every time such an occasion?

Geoff: 31:50

was that the first time you played at the Albert Hall l

Freddie: 31:52

it wasn't. I actually actually used to do a Christmas show with my old school choir called the Glory of Christmas. Right Right, and there was this hilarious conductor called Raymond Gubby is his name and we used to just sing lots of Christmas carols and hymns and tunes, so I did every year at the Albert Hall every Christmas for seven years and then that BBC Proms gig and that was lucky.

Freddie: 32:11

I was blessed to go to a fantastic school that had lots of great music opportunities and that was one of them, yeah, and we used to sort of get up and when, when we did the 12 Days of Christmas, that was the fun song and Raymond would split the hall up into 12 different sections. Wow, so you'd have like five gold rings and six geese are laying. So some people had to sort of pretend to lay eggs and you know everyone sort of got up and had random, so he was the Jacob Collier of his time.

Geoff: 32:35

A little bit yeah, Exactly Whoa.

Freddie: 32:38

Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah yeah, fantastic.

Geoff: 32:41

But I mean, it's always an occasion, isn't it? Playing at the Albert Hall Every time? I've played there quite a lot in my time, you know and every time it feels special because it's such a special place, isn't it so much history there?

Freddie: 32:54

And I guess for me as well. I just never, ever thought, as a kid who loved music and thought I could maybe do it as a hobby, I never envisaged as that 11-year-old kid that walked through the footsteps of my school in Croydon ever thinking I'm going to one day grace the stage of the Albert Hall with a full-blown orchestra and performing the music of Henry Mancini. I just, you know, singing Moon River with his daughter.

Geoff: 33:17

Yeah.

Freddie: 33:17

I mean, let alone anything else.

Geoff: 33:19

I just you know, it'll burn your arm off. What?

Freddie: 33:21

a great experience, yeah.

Geoff: 33:22

Yeah, okay, a few other silly questions. What's your favourite sandwich?

Freddie: 33:27

Oh good, question Love, that it's like being on the Stephen Colbert show what is the best sandwich.

Geoff: 33:35

I'll have your best sandwich in the voice of Donald Trump.

Freddie: 33:38

Okay, so for me it's very clear, my favorite sandwich is going to be, my girlfriend is actually American and she makes a very good grilled cheese sandwich, Grilled cheese.

Freddie: 33:47

So I think what we call a cheese toasty, they call it grilled cheese but it's slightly different. Actually, if we're going to get into the niche scientific depths, I'd probably go for a grilled cheese. Fantastic Grilled cheese with a tomato tomato soup Okay, oh yeah, your favourite movie.

Freddie: 34:03

Okay, I'll do one sort of comedic one that's not serious, and then one serious film. My favourite comedy film is Bruce Almighty, Jim Carrey. I think that's just one of the best films ever so hilarious and ridiculous. And then, in terms of, like I say, a bit more serious cinema I would probably go for. There's a fantastic Tom Hanks film called the Green Mile with Michael Clarke Duncan. That is a fantastic film. Yeah, a couple of honourable mentions, I guess maybe Shawshank, Saving Private Ryan, but yeah, I'd say the Green Mile. Fantastic Fantastic, it's an amazing film.

Geoff: 34:39

Do you have a favourite country? I know you've travelled quite a bit. Have you got a favourite place in the world favourite city?

Freddie: 34:47

I have to say, probably country really tricky, but one of my favourite cities just from having lived there and gone back and absolutely loved the place and I went there before it became trendy is I absolutely love Lisbon, capital of Portugal, Lisboa beautiful place lovely people, great food, amazing music.

Freddie: 35:05

Um, yeah, I went in my early 20s. I did a lot of clubbing there. The nightlife was very fun. I seem to remember from what I could remember of those evenings. Yeah, I'd probably say Lisbon that was. That was awesome. And then maybe just because, um, because it's iconic one outside of Europe, uh, I like New York. Yeah, great, I love New York. Went to the Blue Note at the end of last year and that was yeah, amazing.

Geoff: 35:27

And finally a silly question, do you have a favorite chord?

Freddie: 35:31

yes, yes, I like, I like, I like sus 13s. Oh, because they're just, they just sound so hip and they never know where they're going in life. Now I don't know whether I sound hip, but I don't really know where I'm going with my life, like it's just kind of it's all happening and it's all falling into place, I think, but it's never fully resolved.

Geoff: 35:50

It's not quite resolved, so.

Freddie: 35:52

I'm going to go for an A-flat sus 13.

Geoff: 35:55

Okay, so G-flat major seven over A-flat.

Geoff: 35:58

Yes, Same.

Geoff: 35:58

thing yeah, do you like to notate it as that, or how do you? Yeah, I don't mind slash chords.

Freddie: 36:05

To be honest, I don't know really what the rules are, to be honest, but I think just whatever feels, whatever feels right in the moment. I don't think really about, I don't really think about slash chords and stuff, but yeah.

Freddie: 36:17

I put it as it just came out. Once, when I put it down, I played it on the piano. I went that sounds great. What is that? I actually listened to a. It was a pop song by an R&B singer called Frank Ocean and he did this amazing album called Channel Orange and one of the songs is called Super Rich Kids and I wanted to play it on piano and the second chord of that is an A flat sus 13 and I was like that sounds really hip and then I just stuck with that, so that's my favourite chord. That's a great answer. Yeah, A flat sus 13 wow G flat major 7 over A flat.

Freddie: 36:46

There you go so what have you got coming up? The next big show I've got coming up is on Sunday, the 27th of April. I'm doing my debut show under my own name at Ronnie Scott's. I've got a lunchtime gig. Incredibly, we actually sold out two weeks ago. We sold the whole show out in less than two weeks. I'm still my mind is completely blown. I can't believe so many people wanted to get on the ticket so quickly. I've got a lot, of, a lot of disgruntled friends and family members that now can't come to the show. But that's my, my new project Sorry, my new gig and I'm going to debut some new tunes. That's the plan. So I'm rehearse a few weeks and then we're gonna get it all done.

Geoff: 37:31

How big is your band and?

Freddie: 37:32

who's in your band? So we're a sextet, uh, primarily so. It's myself on vocals, um trumpet, flugelhorn, and occasionally I use a loop pedal machine, uh sort of with my original music, for the more modern tracks. Then we've got uh Chris Bland on piano, uh Luke Fowler on bass, F Floye Sydenham on the drums, Kieran Gunter on guitar and Jess Bullen on the sax.

Freddie: 37:58

So a really great band, and they're my friends and we all get along very well, or at least they pretend to get along with me, and yeah, it's good vibes, fabulous. Well, good luck with that.

Geoff: 38:08

Yes, I'll hopefully come down to see that if I can get in maybe try and see if I can squeeze you in somehow, Geoff. Yeah, yeah, all right then. So great to see you, Freddie. Thank you for your time, it's been amazing. Thanks so much for having me Pleasure, all right thank you, see you soon, obrigado.

Announcement : 38:26

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