Welcome

Jason: You have an amazingly versatile voice! Where did you learn to sing?

Julian: Thank you.  I have been playing the piano since the age of 6, that’s how I learned about pitch and rhythm.  My experiences with vocal teachers were that they didn’t quite know what to do with my voice.   So, I guess the answer to your question is ‘nowhere’.

Jason: By day, you are a Professor of Accounting at the Columbia Business School. Working in two very different fields, do you feel more inclined towards music or accounting?

Julian: I think the two are very similar.  For both you need a good foundation. Music has theory, and for accounting there's the double-entry system. Both foundations dictate what you do, and they both require a lot of professional judgment. And without a foundation, you wouldn't be able to embellish. Not that accounting should be creative.   

Well, one field utilizes the left side of my brain more, while the other utilizes the right side of my brain more.  And it’s nice to know that both sides of my brain are being utilized.

Jason: Reviewers of your records and live performances unanimously agree that you've successfully brought together elements of old and new. Your sound has been described as 'early 20th century vocal styles with clean, melodic early 21st century instrumental arrangements" (Eddie O'Strange, Town & Country Radio Show, Access Radio 783AM, New Zealand). In your own words, how would you describe your own sound?

Julian: I think there is certain stylized quality that is very retro-like when I sing.  I guess it must be all the Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee songs that were playing in the background when I was growing up. 

Jason: You were mentioned as saying you don't sing songs written after the 1950's. What do you find most appealing about the music of the twenties and thirties?

Julian: There is an innocent and timeless quality about the music from that era.  Irving Berlin and Cole Porter are two great examples of the composers from that era that I adore.  There's a directness and economy in Berlin’s style that seems so instinctive to me and I love the sense of joy and playfulness in Porter’s songs.

Jason: Describe the recording process of your albums.

Julian: Well, my debut album “Old, New, Borrowed, Blue” is an attempt to bring back the gramophone quality of Rudy Vallee’s sound.  My second album “Unusual Passage” is a dedication to Fred Astaire.   In my third recoding, “Homage,” the band members and I decided to cover a wider area of music to pay tribute to other singers who have influenced me as an artist, ranging from Billie Holiday to Karen Carpenter, Edith Piaf to Bing Crosby.

Jason: One of your upcoming tracks, "Deep Purple" is a romantic piano-driven track. Can you explain the concept behind your version of the Mitchell Parish/Peter De Rose composition?

Julian: “Deep Purple” is the feature track on my fourth CD “Deep Purple Dreams”.  The idea came from a radio interview that I did.  The interviewer asked me what character I would play in a movie. Somehow, I instinctively answered “a vampire who was bitten in the 20s and lived through all these years singing standards in jazz clubs all around the world.”  

We then built on that idea and developed a set of songs that conveyed the darker, mysterious, and sensual mood.  My friend, Andrew Willett, even wrote the story which accompanies the CD: 

“Yeo took the job singing in the Bitter Melon, Yelena’s club in Shanghai, in February 1930. But it was almost July before he began to suspect. He discounted the pale skin, because the Russians all looked like something out of a ghost story to him anyway. And the way she never left the club or her apartments upstairs between dawn and dusk held no mystery either, because he knew enough about her business affairs to know that her contacts and her clients all shunned the light of day as well. This was Shanghai, after all, and the dangerous pleasures of sex and money and drink and opium and gambling were easily found by moonlight.

By the time Yeo was sure that something was odd about her – there was the way delivery men sometimes went up and never came down, for one thing – he was too in love with her to particularly care. And she loved him in return, and so she gave him the most precious gift she could offer. (Once he was able to walk about the city again, they went to see the premiere of a moving picture: “The Jazz Singer.” You could hear the actors talking and singing. They took it as a sign that the world was getting more exciting all the time, and they looked forward to watching it do so in each other’s company.)

For those with romantic notions about such things: immortality doesn’t mean that love lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever. But they were both grownups, and the end of the affair did not lead to grand acts of mutual destruction. Opera wasn’t their style. They preferred jazz, the new force that was washing over Shanghai and the world: rather than letting the blue notes stop the fun, they improvised, and let life go where it would. When the war made Shanghai a dangerous place for anyone, human or otherwise, the Bitter Melon closed its doors and its owners parted company.

Yeo has run nightspots all over the world by now, in desert cities and mountain cities, on small islands and on broad prairies. (Although he goes by Julian these days.) He stays for a few years, learning to speak the language and cook the cuisine and romance the bright and beautiful. And then he moves on. When he crosses paths with Yelena, there are stories and wine and fine meals – vampires can enjoy food and drink just like you do, darling; they just get their nutrients elsewhere – and promises to stay in touch.

If you’re lucky enough to find yourself in his club, ask him to sing. When he tells you to close your eyes and relax, do. If he offers to cook you a meal, by all means accept.

But make sure someone knows where you are.”

Jason: Have you composed any original material?

Julian: Not yet.

Jason: What do you feel has been the most rewarding part of your career so far?

Julian: Having fans who tell me that they have been “touched” by my music!  

Julian Yeo Offical Website - www.juliayeo.com

Julian Yeo on Myspace - www.myspace.com/julianyeojazz

Julian Yeo on Youtube - www.youtube.com/user/julianyeojazz