We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aviva Jaye. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aviva below.

Aviva, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I loved being involved in the arts from a young age, informally and formally. I would make up harmonies to songs around the house, rewind dance scenes from old movie musicals to get the choreography down in the living room, things like that. My mom say she noticed these leanings early and she and my dad signed me up for dance classes and piano lessons. Once I learned to read music I began to pursue it outside of school and classes, picking out sheet music at the local music store to learn and asking for related magazine subscriptions as birthday gifts. I think by junior high I knew I’d like to at least consider a major in performing arts at college, but. I was still very focused on academics, maintaining straights As and enjoyed those subjects too. Once I started keeping a journal regularly, I began to stare my own self in the face and I realized the investments I’d be making in pursuing my passion. I was prioritizing music and arts and literature by asking for lessons that had stopped as gifts, using any spare money I got to invest in music or dance supplies, taking note of flyers for community performances and opting to audition if I could. By the middle of high school, I swapped out any remaining sports extracurriculars for additional arts ones and became more focused on improving my skills. I vividly remember one day during my junior year of high school. We had a slapdash period that semester called show choir. It was a bit of a mess; this was a very small private school where everyone did most every activity. It was toward the end of the school day, people were distracted and rowdy, our teacher was losing patience and control of the class and we had a performance deadline rapidly approaching that we were underprepared for. There was a moment where people were yelling at one another to shut up and pay attention, and our teacher had rested his head on the piano in exasperation. I remember sitting there thinking, “This is a mess! Even now, in this trash heap, this is the best! Showbiz is my favorite business. Even on the worst days, I think I might be deeply happy!” That’s when I knew I had to pursue with all my might…professionally. If it didn’t work out, I’d have given it my all. But if I loved the work even when it was messy and tough, that was a sign for me.

Aviva, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am primarily a musician. I started in music from a young age, singing then learning piano, eventually clarinet in band and so forth. I play guitar, ukulele and folk harp as well. I am also a songwriter and composer. Because I also have experience in dance and theatre, this comes in handy when I’m taking on new projects or working as a teaching artist or with youth. My degree is in vocal performance. These days I sing with various people and projects and often end up playing an instrument with those collaborators as well. I believe part of what sets me apart is being a multi-instrumentalist who sings professionally. This way people can utilize my skills in more than one way on a project or experience. I also have an arts admin background working with various non-profits over the years with youth, both as part of programming and as part of operations. This experience has helped me stay organized on the business side of being a freelance artist as well as provided opportunities to teach or tutor young people in the arts.

Currently the main thing I am building upon is the experience I want listeners/audience members to have when they interact with my original work. Flexibility, compassion, introspection, self awareness and Afrofuturism are key components of the experience I want to provide with my show, songs, poetry and more. As for the bulk of my collaborative work, I love when worlds blend. I love a standard show or concert or theatrical production, but I am always interested in unconventional arts experiences…playing live harp at a photography opening exhibit, singing for a series of stairwell concerts, setting poetry from writers of the Harlem Renaissance to music for a themed dinner party, good ol’ house concerts and all things multi-disciplinary. I love getting that call or email that starts ” I have an idea and I might want to involve you.” I want to hear that idea!

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had learned a bit about navigating artist funding, grants and residencies earlier in my creative journey. I would have loved to learn about that sort of thing while I was in undergrad, quite frankly. I would have appreciated honing the skills needed to research opportunities, write artist statements, and navigate applications. That seemed like a prime time to incorporate that knowledge. Even after college, I only really stumbled upon these opportunities through other online journeys or through a link a fellow artist would send to me. Perhaps better late than never, but it would have been valuable to build that kind of practice – reaching toward those resources – into my routine earlier in my creative journey so that it could be a more built-in habit by now.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

In my view, at least in the US but not limited to here, society should actively work to deprogram some of the scripts we have about creative arts and creative work. There is still underlying rhetoric that creative or artistic work is optional, or perhaps not even perceived as “real” work in some arenas. History of societies across time and place have shown that art and creative work is a critical component to life and survival as we know it. In addition to continuing to finetune our mindset, observing the valuable role artists play in our quality of life, I think we have to pay attention to the effects capitalism has on the many aspects of a creative’s life in order to see where we can improve access to work, fair wages for skills and experience provided, safe spaces for the work of an artist to occur and accessibility, as with any other field.

I encourage people to customize the way they see art weaving through their everyday lives beyond the prescribed ways we already experience it as forms of entertainment, perhaps education. Is there a new way you can support an artist or creative, who is often a small business unto themselves? Is there a fresh way to infuse your life with the art experience these creatives provide? Is there a way you can take an experience from fun to memorable by tapping into the network of independent artists around you? I say give it a go, get curious. And if you are someone or part of an organization or institution or business that’s in a position to support a creative in an ongoing fashion, look into it. Ask artists what they may need, how it would help them build and grow or sustain. It doesn’t hurt to ask, and I believe communication is a keystone in a thriving creative ecosystem.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.avivajaye.com
• Instagram: @avivajaye
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/avivajaye
• Twitter: @avivajaye
• Youtube: youtube.com/avivajaye
• Other: linktr.ee/avivajaye

Image Credits
main photo for feature : Odell Mitchell Jr. photo 2 of 6: Beth Gordon photo 3 of 6: Alexis Wilkinson photo 4 of 6: Laura Chavez Silverman