Tsar Shate 2’s The Bacchae is an adaptation with a folky-cabaret twist of the antique greek tragedy by Euripide. Album preview + bonus interview below:

The Bacchae is your new album: please could you explain the concept?
The Bacchae is not technically new. It’s been released in 2007 in fact. The main idea of the album was to adapt a ancient tragic play by Euripide, “The Bacchae”, to a pop/rock disc. I chose therefore the main events in the play and transformed each one of those in a song.

You are releasing the album yourself: is it a choice or not? Do you think a label is still relevant in 2010? What expect from a label today?
I produced the album with the financial help of Ace & Company, a private company based in Geneva. I then tried to find a label across Europe and in the US, with no success. It is said that these days the labels are not in the signing mood, especially for small artists.
In 2007 I was starting to study jazz in Paris, which took me a considerable amount of time, and so I guess I quite under-promoted the CD. That’s the main thing to expect from a label today : exposure, logistic, promotion.

The album is available on physical and digital formats: do you think there’s still a place for both? Do you have an idea of the percentage of the physical toward the digital?
I think both formats complement each other. Many people, espacially in the generation born before 1990, still have a perticular attachement to the CD as an object in itself. Appart from that, the digital is, to my point of view, eventually going to remain the only format in the future. I myself tend to buy more and more music in digital. I frankly do not know the ratio between physical and digital, but I promess to Google that and keep you informed!

How do you keep contact with your fans? Through your site, community sites…?
I mainly keep contact with my fans through the community sites we all know. The only contact I have with my fans on my website is for the selling of the CDs. Otherwise, I send a newsletter a few times a year to keep everybody informed of what’s been done and what’s coming ahead.

How do you use & see the web today? And how do you see the future of the internet?
In my everyday life I use the web to share files mostly, through e-mails and FTP servers. Not very glamorous is it? Otherwise I try to do some promotion here and there but I must admit that, although I can work 12h a day at my music, promoting is something I’m not very good at!
The way I see the web? I realize now that I haven’t been thinking about that a lot, and the question is very hard to answer. It’s a strange thing anyway. I mean you got everything in there right? But what if for some obscure reason, we lose the power that’s needed for the computer to function. All is be lost, vanished. For some reason, this vision of losing internet makes me feel light. I deduct from this reasoning that I see internet as a weight, or better : a pressure. I feel obliged to use it, to be in it, to search through it. It’s a great thing, but it drains a lot of energy I think, and should be used with care and full conscience.
The future of the internet? What do I know? I guess it will grow bigger, in terms of information stocked, and in terms of time we spend on it.

How much money could you save by using more digital in your day to day operations ? Is it also important for you to use digital services to have a smaller impact on the ecology of the planet?
I don’t think I would save a lot of money by using more digital everyday. Maybe I’m blind but I don’t see what I could change that would make me spend less through internet.
As for the ecological impact, I try to think of it everytime I can, so if digital can do things cleaner and better, than I’m ready for it, sure! One example I think about are the monthly newsletter from the bank or the mobile phone bills that are not printed on paper anymore.

Recommended music site (services, shop, blogs…)?
I don’t surf a lot so I don’t think I’ll surprise anybody here… I tend to navigate between Myspace, Youtube and iTunes… Not very special right? And of course, the bible of bibles : the All Music Guide, very complete and good tastes in the reviews.
I’ve recently composed a track for a website that sales different kind of things and redistribute parts of the benefits to charity. I thought the concept was pretty neat. Their name is Give Me Hope. Check it out!

Your tips for 2010 (bands, software, hardware, sites…)?
Bands : I’m still very fond of the Fleet Foxes; otherwise I listen to a lot of Jazz at the moment and recommend listening to Gilad Hekselman, Ari Hoenig, Tigran Hamasyan, Adam Rogers, Lage Lund, Rick Margitza (Bohemia) to name the latest heard. A special one : Maria Schneider, with her album “Concert In the Garden”, fantastic.
Oh! And don’t miss my new record, coming out very soon : Alice In Wonderland, a story for piano, sax, bass, percussions and 4 voices!

Software : the only one I use : Sibelius 6, the music notation software, it’s just great!

Hardware : the Godin guitar. Mine is new, and it ROCKS baby!

Sites : as mentionned above, I do not surf a lot. Sorry folks!

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