Nina Simone – ‘Sinnerman’ from Pastel Blues

This is just something that Tash and I listen to together. She's a big Nina Simone fan and my husband had the privilege of working with her doing live concerts. He's a sound engineer, so did a live stint with her. Professionally I had so many questions about it, because she's such a powerful force, like what she did as a woman and as a pianist. As you know she was classically trained and her story is quite legendary and she had a lot of disappointments, and I think you can hear that in the music. But Mark has always said, you know, her ability to just sit down and play, just sit down and out it comes, like a force of nature. And he said she seemed more interested in the lighting because the sound was so much a part of her. There was a confidence that the sound would be fine, no matter who was doing the sound! And the stories Tash and I have heard of her – we were really drawn, well, to everything she did, quite frankly. ‘Mississippi Goddamn’, the power of that; the fact that she was a protest singer as well, and one of the early ones. If we really think about it, she's been a huge beacon of light in our household.