Mark Sholtez
Mark Sholtez is an Australian singer-songwriter. His debut album, Real Street (2006), was followed in 2010 by The Distance Between Two Truths
All About Jazz Interview with Mark Sholtez
It's been more than a year now since Mark Sholtez's debut album Real Street (Verve, 2006) was released. Exciting things have happened since, mainly in his home country of Australia. Real Street celebrated ten weeks in a row at the number one position on the Jazz and Blues Album Charts, and was also nominated for the Aria Awards in the category of Best Jazz Album. To bring things somewhat full circle, Sholtez then proudly accepted the 2007 APRA Music Award for Most Performed Jazz Work.
Sholtez is more than happy to look back on an exhilarating period of his life, in which his career got a well- deserved turbo boost. Let's face it, not every aspiring artist out there is given the opportunity to sign with Verve Records and record with some of the finest jazz musicians available in less than a week. Because that's what it took for a tape with rough mixes to end up on chairman Tommy LiPuma's desk, resulting in a long distance phone call to Brisbane, Australia.
“Before signing a record deal and recording Real Street, I had always looked at that as the ultimate goal,” explains Sholtez. “When you're trying to make a living working the clubs and writing and recording in your spare time, to get it all to come together can seem like such an unlikely reality at times. For me, that's what made it hard to think too far beyond that.
“The biggest change for me, once Real Street was actually released, was the realization that I had, in fact, just arrived at the beginning of my music career. After more than ten years of working hard to get it together I was finally standing on the starting line.
“Now, as I get ready to go into the studio to record a new album, it's interesting to look back on the past year or so and think about all the cool things I've gotten to do. Like playing the Sydney Opera House opening for Diana Krall and touring with George Benson and Al Jarreau. And also, it was very cool meeting people that have made a genuine connection to the songs on Real Street. It's a treat when you're meeting people after a show and someone tells you that they recently got married and they used one of your songs as their bridal waltz; or they walked down the aisle to one of your songs or something like that. I had one guy tell me that he proposed to his girlfriend at one of my shows!
“I'm at the point now,” Sholtez concludes, “where I'm closing the book on Real Street and focusing on the new songs and the new recording. To know the first album has a life of its own now and will continue to play a part in someone's life somewhere is exciting. It motivates me to want to make more music.”
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