Thank you all so much for being with us. You had to wait quite a while for us to start livestreaming. It was very stressful for all of us to wait
for the right time to get the auroras. We had prepared everything for such a long time. This was also probably a very special moment for Sofiane Pamart who was able to play despite the cold. Huge congratulations Sofiane! And thank you for the magical night you offered us. Thank you Derek, and thanks to all the team! You can't see it but there's quite a few people working on the project. What motivates me to go above and beyond in those hard moments is knowing that we are all in it together, in total darkness, doing the best we can to make this show happen. Despite this we can feel amazing energy. It was a real hassle but with the emotion and this outstanding backdrop... I really felt something special. Everything is incredible, we can see the Milky Way right in front of us and the sky cleared up at the last minute. It’s the first time we receive a classical
music artist on Cercle, what was your first reaction when we invited you to collaborate? I love firsts and it’s one of my goals to
be disruptive in the world of classical music. So when you guys first reached out to me I felt that it would work, that we would match. Oh my god I just saw a shooting star! Incredible. On top of that, my approach is to travel the world with my
piano and I try to tell stories of the cities I visit. So I have an ubiquitous relation to travel in my life. So I felt that beyond the genre boundaries of electronic and classical music, we were actually telling the same story. Cercle and myself with "Planet" have a strong connection in what we do so I was thrilled to be able to collaborate. I think you said it all. A lot of people dream of seeing the Northern Lights, I can imagine it’s something else to be playing under them. How did you prepare yourself for this show and does your performance meet your expectations? So you asked me to prepare myself to play
in cold conditions but unfortunately I don't have access to cold chamber. I tried putting my hands in the freezer, but
there wasn’t much I could do. So I couldn't prepare myself much apart from mental training. I really pictured the performance many times in my mind as an athlete would do, trying to think of everything I would have to do, wondering when we would begin. I tried to visualize the show and the conditions I would play in —even though it’s really impossible to really grasp without being here. For me, as for many people probably, it was a dream to see and to experience the Northern Lights. But I never thought I would play under them. So yes this show ticked many boxes. We’re going talk a bit about your career which you started at the Conservatory. I would like to know what were the main challenges you had to face after graduating? Well the Conservatory teaches you the fundamentals and how to master your instrument, but not how to develop a career. I understood that so I was more concerned with surrounding myself with the right people. It took me quite a while to find my crew. My goal was to be the Pianist King just as Luffy wants to be the Pirate King —big up to One Piece fans! So I told myself: I need to find my crew. After a long time searching, the first person I sticked with was my manager, Guillaume Héritier, with whom we began forming a duo. Together we shared dreams and the common goal of conquering the world with a piano. It all went step by step. The Conservatory was just the beginning of our adventure but it gave me what I needed to achieve the rest. It’s crazy to see how connected you are with your manager. We can see that you understand each other perfectly, just by looking at each other. I believe he also directs your music videos? Yes, exactly he directs my videos, he does a lot of things, we even write together. Big up to him who's behind there— I don’t see you but I know you are around somewhere there in the dark. You're in the dark but close to us Guillaume. You built your career upon a fusion of piano and rap music. How were you able to find coherence between classical and rap music, two genres that are not usually bound together? The first thing is that I consider myself a rapper more than I consider myself a pianist. So I felt more out of synch with classical than with rap, even though I was playing classical music. So I never felt out of place with my music within the rap world. There’s always been some elements of classical music in rap, especially a lot of samples. But it was more about using music that was not meant for us, in some cases sampling it without permission, to create new music. I was super proud to come with music that was legitimately ours, that we could play with and do whatever we want with. In the end it all came about quite naturally You collaborated with many A-list French rappers. Is there a French or international rapper you dream of working with? Well I’m very lucky, in France at least, to have come to a point in my career where I feel very fulfilled. I’m currently working with Joey Starr, whom I listened to as a child. I also had the chance to work with Rim-K whom I also listened to. I'm very proud of the collaborations I had with Laylow, who is an amazing artist. At the moment I am well accompanied and I feel truly fulfilled in France. My dreams are elsewhere: I’d love to work with Travis for example. I'd rather work towards something else, on the other side. My next conquest will be crossing... —the Atlantic. Yes exactly, I just need to cross it now. The main denominator between Sofiane Pamart and Cercle —as you were saying at the beginning of the interview— is the idea of travelling and the discovery of new places. Many of the tracks you’ve composed are named after cities. Are they inspired by your own perspective of the city, and / or are they influenced by local music as well? There’s bit of both... For example, I composed the track "La Havane" just after watching a Buena Vista Social Club concert, which was incredible. So I was inspired by the way they compose music, how they tell a story an experience just with the music. What I want to do with my piano is to tell stories about people. That's what inspires me the most. Of course I'll be inspired by the local dances and rhythms, but mostly I’m inspired by peoples' lives. It might be a glance, an attitude, an exchange, a story of an experience there, landscapes. I try to tell those stories through music. But it’s mostly people of each country who inspire me. Well, I can say that you’ve succeeded brilliantly… Is there somewhere you dream of going? Yes, there's a few places I would like to go to. I haven't been to Australia yet and I really want to. And maybe… I am rooted in the present. It’s complicated to look too far ahead as my life has taken up so much speed with so many things happening. Right now I’m taking Kittilä and Finland off my bucket list, where I had never set foot before. I composed a track called Alaska about an icy desert that I only imagined and never saw. It’s actually my only track about a place I have not visited and only imagined. Oh so today you felt the ice? Yes, now I'm getting a bit closer. You’ve rencently collaborated with electronic music artists such as NTO and Bon Entendeur. What’s your relationship with this genre? Do you listen to it at all? Yes of course, however, it’s not something I grew up with. Hip hop was something that came naturally to me, whereas electronic music is something I am less familiar with, but which made me fantasize more. What’s funny when you meet people from different worlds is that each one has a lot of respect for the other person’s world. I appreciate it, it has made the process very natural. Now I feel that I’ve started something and I’m probably going to do a lot more of these collaborations. Really, because it allows me to express myself in new ways. Bon Entendeur gave me a lot of freedom on our collaboration. I wrote the track in one night after an Instagram Story in which they mentioned me: “What’s better than starting your week by listening to Sofiane Pamart’s Medellin?” So I wrote back saying that I was actually listening to one of their track the day before and that I would love to collaborate with them. They said go. So in one night I sent them a track on which they then worked. This process gave me so much freedom, well a different kind of artistic freedom. I'm probably going to do more of that. That track is "Alba", which is exceptional. I was told that you were soon going to publish a book. Could you tell us more about it? What kind of book is it? It’s a book that my manager Guillaume Héritier and I have written. It’s a book that we’ve been writing as we were travelling, touring the world for my gigs, compositions, videos and so on… There are no lyrics in my song, so there’s actually a lot to say and we choose the book format to tell all our stories. There might be anecdotes on how a song was composed, some poetry, many pictures... We’ve put a lot of effort into making a beautiful artistic object that embodies everything that we’ve lived during the past years. It will release in November? If all goes well, it should be out in November. We look forward to seeing and reading it. The more time passes and the less I understand how you were able to play with this cold because I can’t even hold my phone anymore. We can feel that aesthetics and visuals are very important for you. Fashion as well, some say you are an "haute couture pianist". Where does this passion for fashion come from and what synergy do you see between music and fashion? Actually, I watch a lot of fashion shows. Either I attend them in person or I watch my favorite ones on video and then I improvise on them. These events inspire me a lot: the elegance, the movement, the couture and the workforce behind these key events really inspire me. I love the beauty of work that has become invisible. Hours and hours of work have been put into a garment that looks perfect, elegant, but you can’t see the work that’s been put into it. That’s something that inspires me a lot and that I try to do in my music. I don’t want people to feel the complexity. For me simplicity is the last step of complexity after everything else has vanished. That’s where all the emotion lies. And I feel that with haute couture, that's why I am so inspired by it. What you are saying is super interesting. Tonight what you were doing might have looked simple but it really wasn’t, whether it was on your end or ours, who were filming your performance. I’m just going to check if there’s any questions from the audience. Some people have just asked you to marry them. If you were not a pianist, what would be your other passion or job? Rapper or designer, one or the other… I still have many questions for you but do you have one for us? Well I always want to know what the next destination and adventure will be? Or anecdotes about your shows. What is the most extreme conditions you experienced while filming? To answer your first question, I will let you know off camera. To your second question about extreme conditions, we definitely reached a new high today. Before that I would say the Salar d'Uyuni with FKJ. He’s a good friend of mine and he’s watching us right now! BIG UP to you Vince! Yes, I’d say those two shows: today and FKJ. Thank you so much Sofiane. We’re going to offer you a little something, the Mystery Box. I open it and I'll discover something? Yes exactly. Not many people will see this Mystery Box! It’s a gift from our partner Visit Finland who made all of this possible. Finally, I’ll be able to drink something warm. It’s a very symbolic bowl in Finland which was made by hand with local wood. I can feel it! Yes. It’s unique. But right now I really want to use it… I can understand. And then you should find some tea. Yes it's tea! It's convenient, the theme is clearly hot and cozy. I'm clearly going to warm myself up as soon as I arrive at the hotel. I really want to thank VisitFinland once again for all their help and All About Lapland who helped us hunt the auroras. Alex and Filippo big up to you! What a crazy job, aurora hunter… that’s the first thing I was told about the project. They can really feel and find the auroras so thanks to them. WOW, there’s actually a huge one there! No but it’s insane. It is in-sane. Thank you everyone for hunting these Norther Lights with us and helping us find them Thank you to all the team, technical team, artistic team, camera team, all the technicians, that have all made this show possible. We've dreamed about this for a very long time. So it’s with great emotion that I thank everyone for making it possible. As you said Sofiane, there’s a whole team working behind the scenes to make this happen so thanks to all of them. And thanks to you, online, you’ve been sending us so much love. It was really beautiful, I can’t wait to watch it again. It won't stop, the auroras are getting intense behind us. Let's do it again, I'm down. Yes we could do it for hours. Thank you again everyone and see you next time! Thank you very much everyone, bye bye.
