For several years, Sandy Asirvatham was a writer first and foremost, but when one of her projects started to stall, she turned to jazz piano. She wrote and recorded an album called Memoir, which came out last year and earned her critical praise. Asirvatham discusses dark themes on the album but delivers them with upbeat melodies and tempos.

I know you took classes at Towson University for piano and some in jazz. Was that when you first really started experimenting with jazz improvisation?
Actually, my real start was in Howard Community College’s Jazz Band, and that was about 11 years ago. It was funny. It was me, a married lady, and a bunch of 16- and 17-year-old boys. … That was the first time I had ever played regularly in a band. … I had a fair amount of classical background, but until I actually started playing in that student jazz band, I didn’t really leap into actual improvisation.

The first song you’re going to do is a new song, “Petting Zoo.” Talk to me about it.
I was on vacation with my husband and 5-year-old son. [In the Catskills] there’s … a petting zoo, and there were these goats. … They’re just so hungry all the time and they’re getting fed all the time. … I started thinking about hunger and need. Then it became an idea about a relationship where the romantic, sexual intensity is starting to fade … because you’ve been together for so long or whatever and yet the need is still there. And so I just used that image as the metaphor. …

A lot of your songs have really dark themes, but you have a very upbeat delivery.
… When I perform live I’m a pretty gregarious person … that part is there, and it would be silly of me to try to suppress it. But yeah, there is that mix of dark and light, and I can’t really explain it other than to say that I, like a lot of people, have had many dark episodes, but happen to be in a pretty happy and light place.

Check out live music and the full interview with Sandy Asirvatham on Baltimore Unsigned at 8 tonight on 89.7 WTMD, public radio from Towson University. Visit wtmd.org

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