We're heading towards the end of the year which always makes us think of our favorite songs! This month, we caught up with Toby Gad a Grammy-winning, multi-platinum songwriter/producer who has written some of our favorite songs from Beyoncé's If I Were a Boy, Fergie's Big Girls Don't Cry and Demi Lovato's Skyscraper to name a few! We wanted to know more about how he got into the industry, his passion for songwriting, collaborating with fellow entertainers and his legacy project, Piano Diaries! ATHLEISURE MAG: When did you first fall in love with music? TOBY GAD: First it’s so great to be able to talk with you and thank you for having me! I started with music when I was maybe 5/6/7 years old? My parents had a jazz band and probably when I was already in my mother’s womb, I heard all of these jazz songs that they did. They had a very limited repertoire so I always felt that one day I wanted to be able to write different songs because by age 3 I knew all 30 of the songs that they played! AM: I love that! How do you feel that your parents influenced you as jazz artists. My great-uncle was the late tenor saxophonist, Joe Henderson TG: Yes! Amazing amazing saxophonist! AM: I love jazz, I love a lot of the elements of it. How did it influence your music? TG: My mother always listened to Keith Jarrett, the piano player. AM: Love Keith Jarrett! TG: The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett is probably the one record that I have listened to most in my entire life. It’s accompanied me my entire life and it always makes me feel like home. It’s such a great record and just how Keith Jarrett just improvises. He used to start concerts by just
playing one note and then taking it from there without making any plans. He’s just very intuitive and just playing in the moment and I just thought that that was so special. I try – I mean, I’m not that good on the piano. I try to do it myself too sometimes and I lose myself in the piano playing. It’s just such a beautiful feeling when you just watch your hands take you places and explore. AM: We saw Keith Jarrett a few years ago at Carnegie Hall here in NY and you’re right! TG: I was there too! I saw him also in Carnegie! AM: Yes! It was such an amazing show and I felt that I barely breathed during that concert, it was transformative! It was so beautiful and I’m so glad that I had a chance to see him because I had never seen him in person but have heard his records. Such a genius! When did you realize that you wanted to work in the music industry? TG: My brother and me, we always had ambitions. At first we emulated our parents and they rehearsed in the living room and when they were done, we would take over the instruments and pretend that we were musicians too. Then I think at the age of 6 or 7, we started to have our own set of a few Rock & Roll songs and we would play them in the intermissions of our parent’s jazz band. When our parents went back onstage, we went through the audience and collected money. That was our first experience of, “wow, we can actually make money with this.” AM: Exactly! You’re a music producer, you’re also a songwriter, what’s your creative process like and where do you start in terms of creating a song? TG: It's very much lyric driven. It's always
