Jacob Collier at USC SCALE | Entire Performance

[Applause] you know at scale we always want to show you something that or some things that you've never seen before and you may never seen again Jacob Collier is a multi-instrumentalist singer arranger composer and producer based in London England hailed as one of the most prodigious and creative forces of a generation Jacobs self-made viral YouTube videos are what first introduced him to the world and caught the attention of Quincy Jones who promptly signed him to his record label Colliers debut album 2016's in my room won two Grammys and features Collier singing playing arranging and producing everything on his own in his childhood room in London the success of the album led to a one-man show world tour collaborations with everyone from Herbie Hancock to Hans Zimmer to snarky puppy performances with the likes of Pharrell Williams a TEDTalk headlining the BBC Proms and much much more jacob retired the one-man show and is currently on a national tour with his band which i got to experience last friday it was indescribable for scale we asked we actually pleaded for Jacob to reassemble his one-man show to show how he uses technology instruments and voice to to create original works of art man you are in for a treat playing the song that got him discovered on YouTube please welcome the incomparable Jacob Collier [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] baby [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah walk it out don't you worry [Laughter] [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you so much thank you guys I've known Jacob for a few years we were introduced through a common friend and I've seen the growth from when you're at the broad stage in Santa Monica to your one-man show to to last Friday and last Friday really blew me away first of all how old of a man are you I have 24 years old watch 24 and a half actually 24 all right so a couple years older than our undergrad students and at the concert on Friday I was with some ones here Mike atone who's accomplished musician in his own right you know Eastman Julliard and and the monk band at their own bunk Institute and the first thing he says to me is there's 2,000 people there all standing and he says this is probably the hippest audience she'll ever see and I didn't know if he meant hip cool and he goes no this the most knowledgeable music audience you'll ever see and I didn't know what he meant until you asked people how many musicians were in the audience did you see the response yeah I always do that I said how many musicians in the crowd and then he's able to answer and it was like 80% of the room or something like that yes percent of 2,000 people are musicians and you really know that when he says in the after a song how many beats in a measure in the entire crowd says seven seven it's not even a normal time signature so I realized I was in sort of elite company and I asked a couple musician friends Daniel wide line who graduate from Thornton a couple years ago and he wanted to ask you how do you balance performing for you know core audience who was just so steeped in music theory and the complexity and they understand how how difficult what you do is and then still appeal to a broader base and build that sort of a larger audience it's a first any question I mean I'm to start off I'm I'm definitely a massive introvert and I don't know whether you guys are a massive introverts anyone into it and for me being an introvert I spent most of my childhood days in this little room in in North London which is the same room I I still make music in just designing things musically now how would it feel if I did this or this or this and how can I tell that story I never thought about going on tour and I didn't think about having a career for sure I didn't think about building a brand or any of that stuff I just thought well I had to concentrate on making the most beautiful stuff I can imagine and just growing as a human being through that process and kind of almost by accident it was like I guess I might be having a career right now because people are listening to the music and that was that was amazing and a real blessing but not something that I necessarily planned and so a question like you know how do i balance you know appealing to the masses with regard to the things that I want to do how can i balance those two things it's it's a question of an even considered for it very recently compared to be recently because I've only ever been concerned with making sure that the things I'm creating are authentic to me and the things I'm creating a things I care about and I think there are lots of people musicians included who create things that they don't necessarily care about because they have they're hoping it's going to scale conference and people are going to get excited but actually I would say the most important thing is just to do things that you really care about and I've been all these notes and chords and rhythms this is part of this great big language and the language is what I care about much more than the career aspect of it that's almost like oh a bonus I suppose yeah and those things apply whether it's music or the arts or business I mean do something that's authentic to you and that feels right and the audience or the customer will come well speaking of storytelling we had Brian Grazer here earlier and Hayley kiyoko to talk about storytelling you often talk about music as a language and as a device for telling stories even without lyrics can you explain that what that means and maybe show us what that means in terms of how you tell a story with chords and music without words yeah I can definitely do that so all of us have been listening to music for a few years I would imagine right do you guys listen to music it seems like you do okay so if you've listened to music then you'll you'll be familiar with certain things and unfamiliar with others so if I play this chord for example that a lot people might think what on earth is that sound and if I play this chord then you what you guys might recognize that as a chord or even a major chord if you if you realize that there's a major chord or there's a minor chord but the amazing thing about music as a language is that you can play with expectation in a similar way to the way in which you come with with English or any other language but I can lead your ear somewhere harmonically speaking towards a resolution and I can interrupt that resolution with with a strange sound or something that's more unfamiliar and then when I get to the resolution it can be even even more rewarding and I suppose when I think about storytelling you think okay I'm in a I'm in a key like this is C major there are 12 keys they all are and this is one of them C major and so if I go let me see if I go right your ear here's okay I'm in this key and I'm gonna depart and I'm gonna return so I've established a home base I'm gonna go out and then I click I'm gonna come back in now the thing I am fascinated by in terms of music is thinking well okay if everyone in this room whether consciously or subconsciously is expecting then what if I take this note and I do something random but it in a way that the melody is the same but the chords have changed which might sound something like this right the melody is fine and if you were all singing along with that happy birthday you you wouldn't be put off because the note is the same but your new arias is surprised and so that thing of being going home or going somewhere unusual that as a premise can be stretched to a whole number of different degrees and so when it comes to telling stories whether it's with language as we know it or all the language of music or even the language of marketing sometimes it's that element of surprise that will gain somebody's attention but it's surprise that this that's grounded in not the idea of I want to get your attention just for the sake of it but I want to I want to trick your ear into realizing this is possible isn't that strange and actually then I might lead you home and when we get home we've learned something from this weird journey and you know this happy birthday example is he's a rather whittled down version of what could be a much longer conversation but I love playing with surprise I love playing with expectation and it's extraordinary nowadays to be able to rely upon sort of unconscious musical intelligence of almost everyone on earth and work with those as your materials I suppose people know more about music than they give themselves credit or you could lead them and almost everyone here to finish the end of a sequence when you when you think about technology this is sort of a text summit and certainly heavily reliant on Tekken a lot of people in tech here how do you combine techno technology often separates us as humans and disconnects us emotionally how do you use technology as a tool that doesn't get in the way of music enhances it but still connects us emotionally to each other it's a fascination and an absolutely essential one but the challenge with building this show which is the show with which I toured all over the world for two years was how can we make a show where there are multiple instruments on stage acoustic instruments like real keyboards and real piano is a real drum kits but not make the technology that brings them together feel like it's getting in the way you know because if you're not careful live looping shows can be super draining because you see a one two three four stock right and so with this with this show I I have to break very clearly to myself I supposed to find what my what my priorities are and what my priorities were and you have to let technology do things that technology is best at doing and let the human do the thing that the humans better doing if you try and teach a computer how to be a human being not not particularly the most efficient way of doing things right because the human being is very capable of storytelling for example being emotional interacting and what computers can do is they can define a system in which human beings are able to function in a more effective way and sometimes certainly with music people can get a slightly skewed idea of what the role of technology is and sometimes with music people think well technology should be making our lives easier all the time cutting corners and writing the music for us eventually but my personal feeling is that the human touch with music is what makes music so special and in the same way that you wouldn't have necessarily computers or technology trying to teach you how to speak English if you're listening to computer generated music entirely then you're missing that interaction that we share us as musicians and as human beings and so technology I feel is always best when it's kind of invisible and you don't need to know it's there but it's it's aiding your your momentum and so it's kind of updating it up to each of us as first of US consumers but also as developers to define our priorities you know do you want to be more human or do you want to hide behind that the technology and define yourself in a in a filtered environment because both of absolutely possible nowadays you can certainly be a human being with technology in your hands but you have to define that to yourself otherwise if you're not careful you'll be swept up in that tide of I can be defined by all sorts of things and I want you know what I mean but I think it's just about seeing things as clearly as possible and realizing just how powerful technology can be with the right thing at its helm yeah and I think the humanity and emotion in your music comes through even though we know you were using a lot of a lot of Technology in your music you are a prolific songwriter and composer and yet some of your sort of most memorable performances are reimagining and reconstructions of other tunes this is for everybody there's a younger set and some who may be a little bit older tell us how you take a sweet melody written by Burt Bacharach for the carpenters and make it crunchy and different in your own maybe you can show us instead of tell us I can't yeah I'll play the song in fact for you I'll play the song close to you do you guys know there's some close to you why do birds suddenly appear you know the song okay this is this is a Jacobean rendition of said song [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you so much [Applause] Lloyd you recognize that song you know that song the original one you know it house for you that is just incredible how you just recreate a new work of art from something that's already existing it also shows that a good song does sort of live over time and it will survive that kind of skullduggery I want to ask you two more questions and then and take us home with one final song in your current working but you talked on on on Friday's concert about you're here for album work Jesse yeah and if you could share briefly what that is but but one thing that caught me oh I was talking you talked about the importance in whatever we do to remain childlike can you share what you mean by that you know how it applies to all of us absolutely yeah in my estimation and in my experience when I became an adult from being a child and when I looked around at people becoming adults from being children there seems to be it's it seems to be easy to lose this the sort of essence of what it means to be alive there's no reason to be alive and adults think there is they think that the point of being alive is to achieve something or to to gain theater to gain something or to to arrive at some kind of destination that's not how life works that you begin your life and there's no reason and you end your life and there's no reason and so I think that the the tragedy is that people think that life is a very serious thing I don't believe life is particularly serious it's very important but it's not serious and it's a real privilege but that doesn't make it serious either and so right yeah it's it's something I've been thinking about I'm making this this for album albums like a quadruple album 45 songs all to be released over the course of a year and it's like every single musical genre Under the Sun and I've been traveling across the world seeking out all my favorite musicians in all these strange and unique cultures from kind of tradition organ music - to Portuguese music to music from Burma from Mali to hip-hop and singer songwriters and folk folk singers and guitar rock there's all sorts of things I've been chasing these people down and and the album which is called Jessie is it's a celebration of of this ideal of a childlike spirit Jessie is this kind of childlike spirit that hangs on on the whole journey and I just think it's important to iterate that and to and to stop thinking that at the other end of this long journey that we're on by being alive there's something in particular that there is to gain at the end because it's one of the greatest illusions in my opinion of of Education and and industry is that you begin and there's always something that you need to do this there's more than what you are already like you need you need this one thing in your life or you need to you know you need to be promoted you to climb you need to be achieving all this stuff and actually at the top of that ladder is is your death without me to be extremely morbid and I would just say that you should by all means climb by all means strive by Omi's reach by all means inspire but but you have to look around every now and then I think well I'm already absolutely enough and I'm already here and that's cool and I gonna speak whatever language I'm used to speaking and I can learn and I can grow and I can infuse and I can you know all of that stuff I can fall in love and all those things that don't take that striving thing that they take you being in the present moment and that's okay and it's okay sometimes to look around and be like I'm alive alright fine that's cool rather than yeah I'd be alive properly if I just sit there over there you know and so yeah that that will stop that those were my thoughts I think that children are the wisest among us because they don't they don't consume themselves with this with this feeling at least they haven't been made smaller small enough yet to believe that they need to be made bigger that makes sense it's it's wise for your age and those are some of the things we're trying to you please very wise and yet we actually try even you know as a college we still try and instill that we have this performance science institute where we're training and teaching and researching mindset and the idea of tying yourself to a purpose instead of achievement he's gonna lead to a happier life and right absolutely we should you know we wish for our students that you know they learn that earlier like your age instead of my age because you're gonna have a happier less you know anxiety filled life let's let's before you last song I just want to finish where we started which is Quincy Jones for the younger people if you don't know Quincy Jones you have to look up that's the most prolific successful producer arranger of all time more Grammys more Grammy nominations the most albums sold between Michael Jackson and scores and scores of artists and at the end of your show on Friday I got to spend a little time with him a quiet time and we caught up so thank you for reconnecting us but also he just kept saying 24 24 years old 24 years old and he said if that's the future of music it's in good hands no and the last thing he said was that you remind him of him really which I don't know if there's a higher compliment no there is a really know so can you talk about the the influence he's had on your life and how you know how he's available to you in your career mm-hmm yeah I mean Quincy if you don't know Quincy you've got a lot of homework to do he's an extraordinary man he started as a Jasmine in the 1940s 1950s and played in every big jazz band in the world he went on to arrange for people like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald these great jazz singers most of us know Quincy through his work with Michael Jackson in the 80s he produced thriller which is the greatest setting out of all time and he then went on to kind of be the first person to mangle hip-hop with jazz which became everything that is now going with people like Kendrick Lamar and people who am putting all these Orman's together he was one of the most courageous people kind of ever to have lived and he came out of the south side of Chicago cake extremely poor and he's grown into this extraordinary figure and in many fields and I'm just so lucky to call him a friend it's one of the incredible things about being a millennial I suppose is that if you have an idea that you spend enough time with and you put it there and it has potency then it will find the people it needs to find and and I made these these little videos at home with lots of little jacobsen boxes and playing different instruments and things like this and the videos just kind of traveled on their own and one of them found quincy and i've been so lucky to find time over the last three or four years to spend time with him and and just listen to his stories because he's such a wise person and you know he's one of the greatest examples of someone who puts humanity at the center of everything he does it's all about the human being behind it he always says you can never be more or less as a musician than you are as a human being which I would say translates to anything that we do in the world of business or in the world of language in the world of Education you can't really you can't put on a mask for too long because your essence will shine through and so the sooner we can look at our own essence and embrace it and go the better everyone's experience is gonna be because people are used to strive for people who aren't real people and I think that but you know Quincy or someone is people that's put himself on you know he wears his own skin very proudly and he's inspired people to do things that that they want to do not things he wants to do but things that they want to do and that's such a cool thing to inspire you know rather than say do what I'm doing cuz I'm doing it right just to say do do what you do do what you do what you want to do to do what you could do because I did what I could do you know I always think he's one of those people that that speaks so eloquently about this and is this kind of living example of you can go from here to here just by following your as he says following your goosebumps you know just thinking oh I like you know and and ending up somewhere where you have an enormous business and enormous leverage in the world as a human being but you're still in your own skin I mean there's no higher order than that in my opinion so he's like the Top Cat yes so get up all the wisdom well before your last song I just wanted to thank you for bringing joy to our conference to our lives and for wearing Cardinal pants thank you very much I I almost wore the same thing but but Lloyd said I couldn't pull it off so you talk about going somewhere and take us home take us home with one last song one last time for Jacob Collier [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you so much thank you for having me [Applause]

Channel: TheLeapTV

Views: 282,249

Rating: 4.9365177 out of 5

Keywords: Jacob Collier, USC Scale, David Belasco, Quincy Jones, Greif Center, Michael Peha

Id: tb5VEWnnfBY

Length: 41min 55sec (2515 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2020