![\"trixie_whitley_pb\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/trixie_whitley_pb.jpg\")
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A little over a year ago, multi-instrumentalist Trixie Whitley<\/b> recorded a an album’s worth of songs intended as the follow-up to her 2013 debut album, Fourth Corner<\/i>. But after a break during which she gave birth to her first child, she listened to those recordings and thought, \u201cThis just doesn’t seem right any more.\u201d With a totally new approach and new collaborators, she re-entered the studio and created Porta Bohemica<\/i>, released January 23.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter touring the previous record, I was inspired by how the band was sounding live,\u201d Whitley says. Her initial goal had been to reproduce \u201cthe live energy that I hadn’t felt like I captured on my first album.\u201d Yet months later she recognized that her \u201cvision had changed along the way. And the material didn’t seem strong enough to be on my second album. I needed to make more of a statement than just that<\/i>. So I wrote a bunch of new stuff, and thankfully found a new collaborator\u201d in Gus Seyffert<\/strong>, who has worked with Beck<\/strong>, Norah Jones<\/strong>, Danny Elfman<\/strong>, and many others.<\/p>\n In its finished state, Porta Bohemica<\/i> has it both ways. Some of the tracks held over from those initial sessions \u2013 \u201cEliza’s Smile\u201d and \u201cFaint Mystery\u201d \u2013 demonstrate the live-in-the-studio power of Whitley’s band. Whitley believes that on the other, newer tracks, she succeeded in \u201copen[ing] up the palette and expand[ing] more of the sonic direction.\u201d<\/p>\n Though she’s only 28, Trixie Whitley has had a lifetime in music. \u201cBefore I could walk and talk, music was already the oxygen that I breathed,\u201d she says. Daughter of the late singer\/songwriter Chris Whitley<\/strong>, she began her performing career at age 11. Approached by a modern art museum, she began doing DJ sets. \u201cAt the time, they probably thought that it was a fun sort of performance art installation\/experiment: ‘We’ll set up this child on a bunch of beer crates and have her spin this weird, experimental music!’\u201d She learned a great deal from the DJ gig. \u201cThose years were another extension of finding and defining my own sense of musicality, and how I could translate that language to an audience,\u201d Whitley says.<\/p>\n At the same time, Whitley was learning to play her own music. \u201cI started playing drums when I was ten years old; a year later I got recruited by an avant-garde performance collective in Europe. For several years, I went from one production to the next. Usually I was the only child.\u201d Whitley believes those experiences were formative, \u201cespecially since I’m a self-taught musician and performer; I didn’t go to school for any of that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n At sixteen, she quit the collective, quit school, and moved to New York. \u201cI was very aware it was going to take a lot of hard work and craftsmanship to stay true to my vision; it was going to be a long<\/i> journey. I’m still on that journey,\u201d she says. \u201cIt’s inevitably a challenging yet extremely fruitful path to go on.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"trixie_whitley\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/trixie_whitley.jpg\")
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