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The artist will be performing at the Music Island Festival.

By Oswaldo Perez Cabrera.

The Island Music Festival is in Courtney BC in the Comox Valley.

Jon Anderson is a legend in his own spare time as he jokes about it. He was the founder of the legendary band YES, lead singer and composer of many of the tracks including the hits “Owner of a lonely heart” “Leave It” and “It can happen”. YES was always labeled as a progressive r,ock band “there has always been progressive music, I don’t call it progressive rock, I would like to call it progressive music, we were not just progressive, our music was based on rock, jazz, folk, it was a combination of all that” says Jon from California via telephone. His music has been evolving to a more chill orchestration and more spiritual content without loosing the progressive aspect of it. “Everything I do is a progression of ideas, I am working now with orchestra, folk, and indigenous music. Its a combination of music that I like to do, a more deep progressive music, I like listening to electronic progression music, but I also like Ethiopian music which is very ancient but still very progressive”.

His love for experimentation has led him to collaborate with a lot of musicians, among them new age Japanese musician Kitaro and Greek legend Vangelis “With Vangelis it is very spontaneous to make music with. The music comes right away, with YES we spent a lot of time rehearsing, it would take us weeks or at least 3 or 4 days to get a song, with Vangelis was like 3 or 4 songs in one afternoon. It was more like an adventure, like jazz music”. It seems that music apart of being a way of life for Anderson it is also an adventure for him. Before recording his new album four years ago, called “Survival and other stories”, he posted an ad in his website looking for musicians and got a lot of one minute pieces from different parts of the world. “I wasn’t getting a lot of feedback from the guys in YES at that time to do internet work, you send mp3 to each other and you write songs together, you don’t have to be in the same room or the same town or in the same country, music is universal. I had all these people replied to me and I started writing songs, we see each other on skype, I have met maybe half of the people in the album. I worked with a guy from Vancouver, Paul Quinn, he sent me this beautiful piano work and I opened my heart and sang about recovery, my wife Jane was with me, its a very very important song for me because it reminds me of that moment in time, it is very gently, he did the music I wrote the melody and the lyrics, it is called Cloudz and it is the last track of the album. I also work with an Australian, a guy from LA that works on South Park, another guy in Pennsylvania, Holland, England all over”.

His lyrics are very personal, in 2008 he almost died from an asthma attack, the press release said , “Jon Anderson was admitted to the hospital last month after suffering a severe asthma attack. He was diagnosed with acute respiratory failure and was told by doctors to rest and not work for a period of at least six months or suffer further health complications”. His new album talks a lot about that; survival and recovery. But even before his illness his lyrics were very spiritual, they are very personal but at the same time, they have a message to the people “We are all spiritual beings, aren’t we Oswaldo? We are all in a sacred journey and I just like to sing about it, the bottom  line of the message is love, is very powerful. There are no religions, we are all in a sacred journey in this life, we are all connected to the divine, the soul, our lives are never ending, I like singing about it. Music is a very powerful energy.”

What can people expect of the show? “Just me playing three guitars, dulcimer, ukulele, piano with my beautiful wife Jane, I sing some of the YES songs as I originally wrote them to the band, Vangelis songs, I will be telling stories, singing new songs, a couple of songs from my first album Olias of Sunhillow that I never played on stage before, it was my first solo album back in 1976 before you were born, I played all the instruments on the album, I will play all the classic YES songs like “Owner of a lonely heart” or “Startrooper’, all the favourite songs” speaking of which I asked him what is the piece that he likes the most of all the ones that he has composed. “Its funny, its hard to pick out one, but in some ways I love like the early YES music, “Closer to the edge” for example, there is a piece called “Awaken”, of course I love the new album, and I like the album that I did in Vancouver which is called the “Ladder.” ”

Jon Anderson keeps himself busy all the time, he is also a painter “I love art I have been painting 30 years I spent more time painting, its like meditation, I put some of my artwork on the website, its fun” he refers about his other passion.

Jon Anderson is currently working with a Romanian composer via Skype and writing more songs. He is putting a 20 minute song piece of music out in the summer and keeps touring. “we take our health for granted, we take a lot of things for granted, I take my feet for granted, sometimes when I am in the shower I look at them and tell them Thank you, because I walk like a lunatic you know, they keep me standing after all these years and kilometres”.