(smartshanghai.com)
Updated: 2008-02-21 17:26

As a performer the energy in your live shows makes them very memorable. What do you prefer more: live shows or recording albums?

I have been a live singer since I was a child and this is where I learned to be who I am and it's the roots to what I do -- to sing on stage and I was pretty late on my own music. It wasn't until I was 27, which is probably quite late, and so I sort of slowly learned to be this studio boffin where you can be doing embroidery and spending three years doing little details. I was kind of ready to go to a place where these two worlds could meet: The person in me who is the live singer and the person in me that’s more academic, or more like a producer, if you want, and meet at a point where there was more of a holistic approach to it... like an overall view of what I do.

How is the live performance different from the album? Are you successful in recreating the album in a live concert?

I've been quite excited about doing tours where I will -- obviously I'm not so interested in repeating the record and it sort of becomes something else... Probably a part of it -- I'm like a kid in a toy shop where, like on this tour, I can have ten brass players, so I'm really excited about playing all the songs that will probably be better with brass than for example, strings. So the tour now has ten brass girls, Icelandic girls which I auditioned for and Mark Bell is back on the team with me. Damian Taylor is assisting him with the electronics and Chris Corsano doing drums. He actually plays on three songs on the album. And Jonas Sen who is an Icelandic Chinese concert pianist. He's an old friend of mine and is doing pipe organ songs and playing celeste and harpsichord and these kind of things. He’ll be taking care of playing the pipa and the kora. That's going to be his department. Certain songs like "Bachelorette" and "Yoga" something even more grander. So it is really interesting how it changes the quality and then you have to kind of mold things as you are going.

Bjork performs live in concerton Saturday 2 March at Shanghai International Gymnastic Centre. For tickets visit www.emma.cn.

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