Meet Sofia Avery | Composer, Musician, & Bandleader

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sofia Avery and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sofia, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?

Easy. ​​I only feel alive if I’m habitually generating art.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I talked a lot more about Tansy Wine in my previous interview, so I’ll be brief: In my dreams, I am KateBushCaroleKing fronting SteelyDanKingCrimson, and when my waking evenings contain a Tansy Wine rehearsal, I feel like those dreams are coming true. We’re a gently hyperactive, magical-realist, jazz-adjacent quintet serving up striking stories via equally striking music. Right now, I’m most excited about the next evolution of Tansy Wine. I’m in the midst of finalizing a new crop of charts for us, which will be the first major additions to our repertoire since the eleven songs I brought to our first rehearsals last summer. We’ve been playing together over a year now, we’ve settled into our quintet shape, and really juicy ideas are starting to emerge. Gabe and Will both called me TODAY out of the blue, separately, with ideas I wanted to scream about. Trying to build a successful band from the ground up isn’t always easy, especially when (for better or for worse) you’ve got an unusual niche, but my bandmates make even the frustrating parts feel worthwhile. I think the biggest lesson for me has been finding the balance between releasing creative authority and knowing the music well enough to give useful feedback. Because everyone in my band is a mindreader and a creative genius, it’s easy to just say “do whatever you want, I like what you like”, but in excess, that can also be an unfair ask. As bandleader, I feel it’s my job to make sure our flow is sustainable. Every piece is a living document, and I could not have asked for a better band to experience that with. Biggest challenge? Getting gigs. I think that will change, though. We’re a little hard to describe, a little atypical, and we’re still in the midst of making some recordings, so booking us must feel like a bit of a gamble. The fans agree, though, folks – we’re the bees knees. Book us!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Before my friend gets here, I’m making a list of all the shows/jams my friends and colleagues are playing this week and we’re going to as many as possible. Likely venues: The Mercury Cafe, Lost Lake, Globe Hall, Lost City, Larimer Lounge, Gold Hill, Dazzle, Broadway Roxy, Ophelia’s, Number 38, Meadowlark, Bluebird, etc. Wherever, really. Something cool is bound to be happening somewhere every night. Most national touring acts also come through Denver or Boulder at some point, and there are plenty of stacked venues in both areas. We’re thrifting at one or more of the good ARCs on a Saturday, and we’ll go to Learned Lemur and Ritual Craft for an oddity-haul. I’ll drag them to a post-apocalyptic themed skate party or a craft night if there’s one happening (there will be). Obviously we’re going to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Might visit the Cat Cafe. We’ll go to the City Park Farmer’s Market, where there will hopefully be softball sized palisade peaches. On a lazy day we can take a mini hike on one of the Table Mountain trails. We’ll also make a day trip to the Treehouse Adventure Park with a late lunch at Bucksnort Saloon, and we’ll do a Flatirons viewing trip another day. Food-wise, Little India, Jerusalem in University, and Bagel Deli in Greenwood Village will all have to happen at some point.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
This question is impossible to adequately answer! This is going to be long, sorry not sorry.

It physically pains me that I can’t dedicate a paragraph each to all the special music teachers I’ve had in my life. I know I don’t have a captive audience, though, so I picked one quote that has stuck with me from each of just three VIP angels on my shoulder, pre-college:

– “It doesn’t matter how hard the measure is, you can’t just edit Bach” – Jody Ellis, my cello teacher
– “Get her out of here!” – James Butler, vocal mentor
(“her” was James’ nickname for all forms of musical meekness – fidgeting, insecurity, bad practice habits, weak notes, etc)
– “Composition is a process, not an affliction” – Jeremy Bleich, high school composition mentor.

There are also many, many professors I should dedicate my shoutout to, but I picked three whose guidance and/or general ethos markedly altered me or my music for the better again and again.

– It feels sacrilegious introducing Ron Miles, because to so many fans, students, and friends all over the world, he needs no introduction. Composer, cornetist, trumpeter, deeply holy person. When he passed in March, I drove to a friend’s house and we just sat on the couch and cried together for hours. It’s still so hard to write about him, so here is the last paragraph of what I wrote that day: Thinking about Ron and the one of a kind way he chose to use his time on earth, I’m inspired to double down on all my creative endeavors, to imbue everything I do and say with love, to lift up the people around me no matter what is going on in my own head, to listen as hard as I can and spend all my energy finding and communicating the beauty of the world.

– Pianist/vocalist/composer Dawn Clement. Her fierce and kind leadership, exhaustive knowledge, candor, and jedi-master ability to lift students out of their comfort zone into THE zone, gave and continues to give me so much to aspire to. Dawn’s jazz combo is where I really found myself. I welled up, laughed, trembled, hollered, and got the chills, regularly.

– Cherise Leiter and David Farrell, my composition professors at MSU. They persistently called me on my fluff AND believed in me.

I know this is so so long, so I’ll just say this: anyone who’s known me in the last year knows that I will mistily gush about my bandmates to anyone who will listen. I’ve been traveling for the last two months, I’ve seen and done things that knocked me off my broomstick, and still in my idle moments I was daydreaming about getting back to work with them. The four muses in Tansy Wine (Sonya Walker, Max Moore, Gabe Gravagno, and Will Kuepper) are the wind beneath my staff paper. My dear friend and oft-time bandmate Will Roland is leading another project right now that fills my cup, too. My musical community has become the air I breathe in the last several months, and I hope it stays that way.

Last but not least, I have my wonderful artsy-fartsy family to thank for a whole lot. I got to fall asleep on couches at so many of my dad’s band rehearsals and wake up to improvised jingles about how late for school I was going to be if I didn’t get up soon. My family doomed me to need music.

Website: https://www.tansywineband.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tansywine.band/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tansywine

Other: https://nehamamusic.com/

Image Credits
Jessica Diaz