Mirah tours, like Mirah albums, are never predictable. I caught up with Mirah over email, in between rehearsals. Your music always keeps me guessing. Are you a restless soul? I think I would describe myself as enthusiastic and curious rather than restless.
Walk me through the concept behind this tour. For my set, in addition to the quartet, Jherek will play bass and percussion and my bandmate Maia Macdonald will join on vocals, percussion and guitar. And I like to move around! Jherek and I have worked together a number of times over the years. Did all of your songs make a smooth transition to string quartet? Was it a difficult process? Jherek wrote all the arrangements. And really, they all responded quite differently to the new form.
Some that I thought were a risk to put on the list ended up sounding born that way, and others that I was expecting to go one way went another. Handing the songs over to Jherek to make the arrangements felt similar to when I made my remix album in I had always been so involved with every detail of my recordings, so I thought it would be a good experiment to release that control and let the remixers do the driving.
I much prefer navigating to driving. Sometimes there would be a clarinet player, sometimes keys, sometimes drums, sometimes none of these. I love this re-inventing of songs, with new people and instrumentation.
I wanted to give my songs more of a chance to explore a chamber music setting. Sometimes I think of touring like taking my songs on a fun trip, a vacation! I want each one to be a new adventure for them. I met Jherek first through our mutual friend Lori Goldston in Seattle. She and I have written, recorded and toured together a bunch. Jherek is from the Seattle area and has also worked with Lori quite a lot over the years, and on one of those days on one of those years, Lori invited Jherek to join us for a show.
