Matthew Sheens is a jazz musician from Adelaide, who relocated to NYC in 2011
He won an APRA Professional Development Award in Jazz in 2013, and used part of the prize to record his latest album, Cloud Appreciation Day
He recommends applying for the Green Card lottery early if you want to gain permanent residency, as it’s a long and arduous process.
“You’re just spoilt for choice,” says Matthew of the pool of musicians available to perform his work in New York. “I've been fortunate to work with a pretty famous bass player, John Patitucci, who plays with Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock,” he says. “I've stumbled into a situation where I get to play with him a lot, so getting him to play on my work has been a nice experience that I wouldn't have been able to get in Australia.”
John Patitucci also appears on Sheens’ new album Cloud Appreciation Day, which was recently released by Berlin label QFTF. The album was recorded over two years across Sydney and New York, and saw Matthew put part of his 2013 APRA Professional Development Award (PDA) Jazz prize – a day of recording at Studios 301 – to very good use.
“I couldn't believe how amazing it was,” he says of the studio. “Because I was living in the US, I had to cram in a day of recording on a trip back, and write the material on that trip.”
Recording in two different cities also meant that he needed to find a studio in NYC with a piano that matched the sound of the one used in Sydney. He ended up settling on two: The Samurai Hotel Recording Studio and Big Orange Sheep.
“In New York, every album, I've had to research as many recording studios as possible because as a piano player, there's an extra element of not only making sure the recording studio is amazing, but seeing what the condition of the piano is like,” says Matthew.
“A lot of these recording studios have a whole lot of history, along with the people that use them. And so sometimes I'm mixing an album and some ridiculously famous person will walk in or the engineer will say, ‘Oh, I've got to set up for Bjork tomorrow.’ That was actually my second album I think. Bjork was coming in the next day and they had to set up for 20 hand drummers.”
Body: “It takes a while,” says Matthew. “The typical way that people get a foot in the door in New York these days, just because of the nature of music schools, is that they go to a school in New York and then while they're studying they have a bit of a foot in the actual working music scene,” he says. “Who your friends are is who you play with really.”
But for Matthew, who completed a masters at New England Conservatory in Boston before moving south, it was a little tougher to get a foothold in NYC, given that most of his classmates remained in Boston or returned to Europe after studying. Instead, friends from home helped him get connected.
“Strangely, one of my best friends from high school did his masters at Juilliard in classical music, so I kind of stole all of his classical music friends! They were my first music friends,” he says.
“Just being visible, going to gigs and engaging with the city all the time is really how you make friends and get to play with people and know people. In Adelaide or Melbourne or Sydney, if you live there for maybe two years or so, you'll pretty much know everyone in the scene, but New York is just this weird infinite universe. You'll never know everybody.”
But music schools are definitely not the only way to break into the New York scene he says.
“I have a friend who moved here two years ago. He uprooted his life at 30 and moved to New York from Melbourne, so I was able to witness him go from bare bones nothing to making things happen - without going to music school or any sort of institution. He just went out and made friends and did sessions almost every day…making that almost a career. That becomes your building blocks for getting gigs.
“That can be kind of challenging and scary in an environment and a country where you don't know anyone, but just making that such a priority that it actually becomes part of your career, at least for a little while, is important.”.
Rage Against the Dying of the Light
Cloud Appreciation Day
A place called the Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn which is really cool for chamber music. Although it's not in the heart of the city so it's really hard to get people out there. My favourite clubs in the city are in the West Village - that's kind of the heart of things. I do this rehearsal at the Lincoln Center every week and I haven't played an actual concert there but it's an amazing space. Anywhere I don't have to bring a keyboard is amazing, typically.
I try to do that in my apartment (Uptown, on the border of Harlem and Washington Heights) which is really tricky because the sound between people's apartments travels very fast, especially in my apartment, and my neighbours hate me! I have a piano and I would love to have a drum kit in there as well but I don't think that's going to happen. The sound just travels so much. I hear everything that goes on in their apartment as well!
It goes in seasons, really. Sometimes there's almost too much going on and then sometimes, typically summer, I find very quiet because I think a lot of people go out of town. It turns into a different city in the summer. So I find myself here (in Australia) a lot of the time in the summer months - I get perpetual winter and no summer.
It's hard to say because it's just become my home now, but - this might sound clichéd - maybe the urgency of the city might have some sort of impact. I guess there's this condition that New Yorkers have, I can't remember the exact term, but it's this fear of missing out on something. So when you're not out at night, you know you're missing out on something awesome. If I'm not playing, I try to spend a lot of time out at people's concerts, just getting a constant stream of really interesting music. I think I probably write more after being really inspired by stuff like that. The city just constantly throws amazing things at you if you want it to.
“Apply for the Green Card lottery when you’re not even there!” he says, referring to the Diversity Visa Lottery, which provides the opportunity to enter a draw for permanent residence in the US.
Matthew counts himself lucky to have “stumbled upon” a Green Card this way, after spending many years jumping through hoops to get various different visas, including an E-3 visa which he obtained as a music teacher. He sees visas and immigration as the only roadblock for artists considering the move.
“If you have the drive to uproot your life and go somewhere, then you're probably going to have the drive to make something happen for yourself,” he says.