Rosy Cheeks by Irsa Destiwi

Rosy Cheeks. The happy, nervous energy of diving into something exciting but also new. It is appropriate then that the first single and title track of this album marks Irsa's first album leading her own band. The Rosy Cheeks single was also the most recent song composed in this collection and signaled that Irsa was finally ready to record her album. While Irsa started composing music for her own band many years ago, she never felt quite ready to bring a collection of these songs together...until now.

While already an accomplished and confident arranger, composing and recording original songs for her own band would put Irsa's piano skills and jazz musicianship front and center. It was this pivot that became the toughest obstacle to clear. With sporadic lockdowns in place due to COVID-19 and the cancellation of nearly all performances, Irsa used all of this time at home to focus on honing her skills, and confidence, for soloing and improvisation. Listening to jazz masters like Charlie Parker and Wynton Kelly, practicing transcriptions, going through live performances of pianists such as Emmett Cohen and Peter Martin, and working on improvisations through virtual jams with friends.

Then in August, Irsa told bassist Kevin Yosua that she was thinking about recording Rosy Cheeks but wasn't sure she was totally ready yet. Kevin told her, 'masih banyak yang PD walaupun musik gak berkualitas jadi kenapa harus gak PD' (there's a lot of people that are confident although their music isn't great, so why should you not be confident.' Yes, Irsa realized, why not? With this in mind, Irsa was ready to take the plunge.

As an arranger, Irsa is known for creating rich harmonies and bringing exciting new styles to existing songs. She used these skills to re-arrange Indonesian national and historical songs for two albums as part of the duo Bandanaira, which paired Irsa with vocalist Lea Simanjuntak. Irsa also released three albums as part of the band Shadow Puppets. The band's first two albums included original songs before re-arranging classic Indonesian songs for their final album, working with legendary Indonesian vocalist Harvey Malaihollo.

After bringing her own unique takes on many traditional songs, Rosy Cheeks brings Irsa's focus back to the present. Although creating a straight-ahead jazz album, Irsa still wanted to bring a unique element into the mix - for this she chose a harmonica to round out the quartet's sound, played by Rega Dauna.

Now we hope you'll sit back, or stand up and dance around, and enjoy what will hopefully be the first of many upcoming albums!

All of these songs were recorded live on October 20, 2020 on the western outskirts of Jakarta at Kana Space. Irsa has now played with album players Kevin, Dave, and Rega for over six years.

Irsa was trained in classical piano but started to branch out while performing in cafes as a teenager. Then after joining a jazz workshop at age 19, she never looked back and has continued to hone her skills as a jazz pianist. In addition to arranging a wide range of music and leading her own band, she has released two albums as the duo Bandanaira and three albums in the group Shadow Puppets

YouTube