You’ve collaborated with many musicians. Which of all these collaborations challenged you the most and why?
Well they all challenged me in a different. I’ve had the honor to play with very good musicians with different specialties. Pat Matheny, Paul Bley, Paul Motian, Charlie Haden and also great musicians from the European classical scene like Misha Mengelberg & Ernst Reijseger. Maybe my greatest challenge was recording Schubert’s Winterreise. We didn’t change anything so I had to study really, really hard to get it perfectly done.
Describe the music by Wired Paradise.
Wired Paradise is about life in the big city. You wake up in the morning and you never know what you’re going to get. You have to work your way through the day. It’s enjoyable, it’s very energetic, it can be aggressive, it can be relaxed, a lot of challenges that you need to take care of. You need to stay awake; otherwise people will eat you alive.
If someone wants to start listening to Wired Paradise albums between Temptation [2006] & Meet Your Demons [2008]), which one would you recommend first?
I would actually recommend that they listen to White Tiger. It’s a live recording but it’s not from one concert. It’s from a series of concerts all over the world spanning over a year. I brought my own engineer, and we recorded 50 hours worth of music, then cut it down to 60 minutes. There are recordings from India, Greece, Vienna, Amsterdam, Berlin, and everywhere! The very best we could pick from. I think it’s a wonderful album.
Did your brother (a Dutch musicologist) played a role in your involvement with music? If not, who did?
Not really. But I came from a musical family. Actually my parents played a very important role for me to get into music. I’m the youngest of three brothers. I’m actually the only one who survived the ambition of a career in music, so to speak. My middle brother played drums but more like a sidekick kind of way, and the eldest one quit music 20 years ago and got himself a career in science.
Do you have a favorite song that you perform live, which almost always get the best (good?) reactions from the audience?
Well it depends in the country that you play but in general nowadays it would be ‘Meet your Demons’, my tribute to the great Iggy Pop. People enjoy it. It’s very short, very loud, and chaotic. But I like it.
Why No Black Tie?
No Black Tie is the ideal spot to warm up your band (Editor’s note: Yuri traveled to perform at the Penang Jazz Festival after his NBT performance). The hospitality is at such a high level because of Evelyn. Such a great host. That always pushes us to pay a visit and perform here before we do other stuff.