Jazz Singer Melody Gardot on Creativity in a Pandemic

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AMANPOUR: Oh, I could listen to a lot more of that, music for the soul. And Melody Gardot is joining me now from Paris. Welcome to the program. That was lovely. I want to ask you that, were you together? It looks like you guys were together. Were you together singing that? Or how did that come about?

MELODY GARDOT, MUSICIAN: In that particular clip, yes, we were. But the incarnation of the music, unfortunately, was deterred by the circumstances we all know so well globally around the world, meaning it was not being able to fly, not being able to come together. So it was interesting to have a piece of music done on two different continents, especially as a duet. That’s not typical for me at all in the kind of music I have done. And we had to come up with a way to say, do we wait, or do we just give it a shot? And so, the first time we met was there in Tuscany about two weeks ago to three weeks, I think. But we met through music. We never spoke. We discussed. We just listened to each other’s ideas on the recording and then finally met up afterwards.

AMANPOUR: And the whole album, how did it come together? Because, as you say, I mean, it’s just completely unusual circumstances. How did you — I think you — I think you produced it at the Abbey Road Studios here in London. How did the whole thing come together?

GARDOT: Well, this was quite an ambitious move to decide to push through during this time. And I think our first feeling of, OK, we can do this was with a track that we released as a single to benefit health care workers. This was a single called “From Paris With Love,” where we had orchestra musicians all around the world record themselves while quarantined. And then they sent in their performances. And we just put the music online and said, give it a shot and we will do our best to try to put it together. Those that had the most competent sonics were chosen and then also paid. And we, bizarrely, somehow managed to get that word out so quick that, within a week, we had some 50 countries around the world where people were playing. And so it was this impossible global orchestra, players I have never met, that perhaps I never would have met before, and very symbolic to the thought and the notion that we can continue to create, despite this distance. And so that gave us a bit of ammunition. And when we moved forward, the discussions were, again, do we wait until everything is back to normal? When is normal?