HOW IS KITT PHILIPPA GETTING THROUGH CORONAVIRUS TIMES?

Kitt Philippa is one of Northern Irish music's most promising new artists. She has a musical imagination that plucks a plethora of genres out the air and weaves them with grace notes into three minute art forms of pop beauty. The title track of her debut album Human has been all over local radio and TV... check out her version with Daithí and the Belfast Community Gospel Choir... and BUY that record! If they had a t-shirt in XL, I'd buy that too!

I asked Kitt how she was doing in lock down and she is not only insightful about life but points us to some wondrous tunes to listen to as well!

 

What were you working on before the lock down?

I had a number of live performances approaching: in Dublin with the Dublin Gospel Choir and then in the Ulster Hall with the Ulster Orchestra as part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. 

 

At what stage did you start thinking about how it would impinge on your work?

When it became a possibility that my first show would get postponed, it became clearer. In the early stages, there was hope the virus could be well contained.

 

What are the ways that this all impacts your life as well as your work?

Absent family, friends and animals; adjustments in various areas.

 

What ways are you using the down time?

The context (global pandemic happening on top of existing concerns) makes it challenging to stay healthily balanced in the living. It is important to have work and purpose to the day; it’s continually important to try to get rest, to be gentle and honest, even forgiving, with ourselves in between times.

How easy is it for you to create in these unfamiliar, maybe anxious times?

Everyone is different; for me, creativity is a sort of cohabitation. Feelings of unfamiliarity and anxiety are, themselves, not new; it’s just so vital now, as ever, to manage them. At the very least, that takes knowledge and conscious effort.

 

What can we do to help?

We are all so massively gifted in different areas: encouraging, sensitive, caring, humorous, poetic, leaders, organizers... people need to - and can - still use what they have to help. 

People will be feeling (more) anxious, lonely, fearful - but some of the reasons are collective. When you go through those things alone, it is awful. Collective understanding can help, I have watched that happening, we can learn from that observation.

People are still finding out they have cancer, or losing a loved one for various reasons, or being abused, or struggling to feed themselves or their families. Some of the food bank supplies are running low (The

Trussell Trust, CrossCare are good places to go if you have the means to help and most supermarkets still have their area to donate cans and toiletries etc.,). Remain vigilant to all these things and more - now and after the pandemic itself has passed. 

 

What plans have you for when we get out of this? New records?

I have shows booked until September so it’s hard to plan exactly what I’ll be doing (none of us know when our communities will be out of immediate danger). This year was supposed to be a year of live shows, since the release of my album, Human, last October.

Of course, all being well, new music is always the aim. At the moment all I can do is write and continue to update with news, on my social media.

 

Give us three albums that influenced you that we should all investigate as we wait for Coronavirus to pass?

Music and sound continues to be powerful. I appreciate Jeff Buckley's work so much, but I’ll assume you’ve listened already...

Daniel Caesar - Freudian: a debut record with some wonderful tracks (Barack Obama seems to agree, if you need another opinion) and I was fortunate enough to hear him play live when he toured the album early 2018. 

Mr. Jukes - God First: Also of Bombay Bicycle Club, Jack Steadman is incredibly creative and highly enjoyable.

Leif Vollebekk - Twin Solitude: Lovely relaxed sounds from an expressive character who came to Belfast and played a solo show a couple of years ago.