Black Sesame - from maths to music and song

Fusing elements of rock and jazz, electro and acoustic, with poetic lyrics meant to be listened to, the music that Melissa Cox makes as Black Sesame is not easy to classify. And that's the way she likes it.

"I don't want it to sound like I'm recycling material that has become generic," said the Sydney Conservatorium of Music graduate whose debut CD, Brink, is due out early in 2007 and is currently getting airplay on FBi and 2SER.

"And I like all my songs to sound different from each other."

They do- from 'Engage me' with its pockets of sexy sultriness, to the edgy, driving 'I know' with its cross rhythms reflecting its characters' cross purposes, to the tender 'Angel songs', intimately soft yet intricate in its meaning-laden layers of sound.

"I want every song to be a little miniature work of art," said the singer-songwriter and violinist who's not easy to classify either.

In her 'day job' she sings jazz standards - which she's done as far afield as Scotland, Japan and China - supplemented by tutoring mathematics at the University of Sydney.

"I like having a room full of students and I like maths - and it's good to keep that part of the brain ticking over," she said.

It was when she was doing her PhD in maths, studying the social organisation of ants and honeybees, both at Sydney University and Bath in England, that she started writing songs.

"The more I immersed myself in science, the more the creative aspects I'd been ignoring kept bubbling out," she said. "It was inevitable that I ended up going back and studying music."

She chose to do the Conservatorium's two-year Diploma in Jazz Studies, concentrating on violin which she'd learnt from the age of seven as a classical instrument.

"Having had a few years without touching violin eased me into improvisation, because there's a paradigm shift between classical music and jazz," she said. "Classical music is about reading the notes and playing it exactly as the composer intended. In jazz you rely much more on your ear."

The compositional aspects and harmony classes where students arrange other people's tunes were what she most enjoyed about the course, along with 'concert practice' where students perform with a band they've put together and rehearsed, she said.

The latter gave her the chance to write her own tunes, some of which she later reworked into songs that ended up on Brink, so named "because there's a common thread of precariousness or transition in the songs".

Brink features Dr Cox as upfront vocalist as well as violinist, with fellow musicians on guitar, bass, drums and keyboard. Samples from the CD can be heard onher website where the CD will soon be available as an mp3 download before it's released in February.

Black Sesame's highly original music can be next heard live at 10pm on 11 January at the Orange Grove Hotel, Leichhardt, then as part of "Poptarts" at the Empire Hotel, Annandale on Mondays22 January and 26 February (times to be confirmed).

"I like playing in rooms where people are prepared to sit and listen. It's all about engaging people," she said.

By University of Sydney