Yaron Herman on Radio Paradise

Although he didn’t start playing piano until he was sixteen years old, Yaron Herman has become not only an expert pianist and composer, but also an advocate for creativity. Having spent much of his teen years convinced he wanted to pursue basketball, a change in circumstances meant that going professional wasn’t meant to be, and instead he began his journey to become an internationally recognised jazz pianist. Alongside his music, Yaron has also recently become an author in his book Le Déclic Créatif, (roughly translated as ‘The Creative Spark’) which reconstructs the idea of creativity as a way of being, rather than a talent.

With the upcoming release of Yaron’s new album Radio Paradise on Naive Records, last month I was fortunate enough to discuss the album with the pianist himself, as well as the topic of his new book. 

You’ve chosen a catchy title! Where did the name Radio Paradise come from?

It’s strange to say, but I usually have quite a hard time finding titles for songs or albums. I feel it's like reducing something that’s still very raw and emotional for me into something verbal; it can create an immediate association that’s very subjective. I also never want to impose anything too specific on the people listening either. I want everybody to be able to make up their own story about what they hear, which can be a challenge when finding titles. But this title actually came as a joke in the studio. We were listening to some of the songs, and where the music is sometimes quite complex we all looked at each other and said, ‘yeah, this is not radio material’... But then we moved on to another song from the album and I remember saying, ‘See, this is like paradise for a playlist’, and the others agreed that it was like 'a radio paradise’. So that’s how we ended up with Radio Paradise as the title. 

Talented saxophonists María Grand and Alexandra Grimal join you on this album. What does their addition to your ensemble bring to the project?

Well, the project started off as a quartet featuring María Grand mostly on the album, which is also the way I think we're going to tour the project as well as much as we can. But I've known Alexandra Grimal for a very long time and I really love her approach. I wanted to have two saxophones on some of the tracks for this album, as well as feature Alexandra on the project. 

I think whilst having very different approaches to the saxophone and to their playing, they both have a common trait: they’re musical searchers. Alexandra and María explore their sound and phrasing in quite an unconventional way and both of them have a very unique voice – something I really care about. Surrounding myself with musicians who, beyond obviously playing their instrument very well and being very knowledgeable, also have that ‘something else’ that might be a little more difficult to pinpoint is really important to me. It’s like a mystery element that adds an extra something to the music. I've always been fascinated with musicians who possess that, like Thelonious Monk or Dewey Redman, all those people who have a kind of esoteric angle. You don't really know why or how, but it strikes you when they play a note.

When you’re not making music, you’re writing books! You’ve spoken about creativity as a way of being, not a talent, and recently published a book on this. Can you tell us more about that?

Well, it all started when the pandemic hit and, like many of us, I couldn't perform or go out on the road and play. So I started asking myself ‘what’s the role of an artist when he cannot be on stage and perform?’ In society, does the artist have a function or do they lose the active ingredient that makes things meaningful? And I wondered what I could contribute if I wasn’t performing, and that was a difficult question to ask myself. I was searching for meaning and for answers until I thought that maybe, since the way I started to play music was so unconventional, I could try and reverse engineer the whole process to share it with whoever wanted to hear about it.

I wanted to dissect the myth around creativity, because when I started at the age of sixteen, no one thought I would be destined to go into a musical career. I wasn't singled out and identified as an individual who would make it as a child, I didn't go to a conservatory and I didn't have a musical family. But I was lucky to study under an incredible teacher who had developed a very unique methodology that mixed different things in the approach to teaching, like mathematics, philosophy and psychology. We would talk about so many things that had nothing to do with music and I wanted to share that methodology, along with all the additions and discoveries from my own experiences. 

I think it's extremely important that as individuals, regardless of if we think we're creative or not, we recognise that we all have this natural capacity to create. When we were children, we would play, we wouldn't care about what people thought, or compare ourselves all the time. We were just thriving in that child-like mind. It shows us that at some point we were all creative; that it's important to engage with it even in small doses, even if we don't want to become professional musicians or artists. But it’s about finding a place in our lives where we allow ourselves to reconnect to that spirit, that essence, which is profoundly and uniquely ours.

Speaking of creativity, what is your compositional approach like?

My approach to writing is that I'm an ‘idea collector’. I have all these notebooks that I’ve carried around with me for years and years. Some of those ideas make it to become compositions, some of them are still waiting to find their place and reveal their true meaning.

Once I have some ideas, I begin to explore them. I start to use different techniques of composition, all the mathematical manipulations that you can find from an initial idea, and I just start improvising and playing around. Of course, you also have those melodies that just come to you in the middle of the night or when you're on the train! I try not to judge the quality of an idea but try to treat them as all essential, because I feel that they're all connected somehow, even if I don't see it. For me, a musical idea is like an ecosystem. It never comes alone, sometimes it’s there to allow the next idea to flourish. I'm trying to live in that world of ideas, to try and find new possibilities. I can tell you that there's one song on the album that has been in my notebooks for over 10 years and it finally revealed why it was there when I was writing this album!

Do you have any significant musical influences? 

Yes, for sure. I’m greatly influenced by the people I admire the most, which in my case are musicians like Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett and Paul Bley. I love Shostakovich, Bartók, Björk, Radiohead and Sufjan Stevens too. I'm basically fascinated with music that sounds song-like, including sounds of pop and folk, or music where there's a melody that touches me. I'm a melody guy, which is why there are so many hooks and melodies on the album – even if the environment can be rhythmically quite rich. I always feel like I need to regroup around some federating force of melody.

What do you hope listeners take away from Radio Paradise? Is there a specific message or feeling that you hope that they take away from the album?

Absolutely not! Just listen to it and see how you feel. I guess the beauty of music is that it doesn't have any specific message, it's open to interpretation. We put a lot of love and care into this music, so hopefully it will make you feel good. 

Where do you see yourself heading next? Is there anything that you're eager to explore in the future?

Absolutely - there's lots of things I’d like to get started on, and I already have two or three projects I really want to explore. There's this timeline of records: you record something and then it usually comes out either six months or one year later. You work for years or months on the repertoire and planning side of things; from getting the right people all the way to the studio, the mixing and mastering; and then the editing at the end – it takes a chunk of time. But once that's done, you still have about six months or a year until the record actually comes out and when it finally does, your mindset is usually already on the next thing. I don’t want to say too much too soon, but I'm already spreading out in different directions. I’m in discussions about working on projects mixing written music and improvisation with classical musicians and larger ensembles, lots more composing, as well as a few fun collaboration projects coming up. I try to keep it interesting!

It sounds like you don't want to slow down by any means… 

No, definitely not. I strongly believe that we need more good energy, good vibes and good music.

Will you be touring to share this particular album with a live audience?

Absolutely. We're coming to London on May 30th to play at Ronnie Scott’s which is exciting and then hopefully more performances in the UK later on. We have lots of concerts across Europe as well, so we're going to try and spread the gospel as much as we can.

Radio Paradise is available on CD and Vinyl from Friday 4th April 2025