Testaments make music that feels alive. Their songs move gently between careful writing and free expression, never rushing and never forcing a direction. Rooted in jazz but open to many ideas, the band focuses on emotion, honesty, and human connection rather than rules or trends. Every piece they create is shaped by trust between the musicians and a strong belief that music should mean something, both to the people playing it and to the people listening.
What makes Testaments stand out is how much their music changes in the moment. Some songs begin with clear lyrics and structure, while others grow naturally through improvisation and shared instinct. Live performances are especially important to them, turning each show into a one time experience where no two nights sound the same. Their use of voice, euphonium, and atmosphere creates a sound that feels unfamiliar yet welcoming, drawing listeners in before the words fully reveal themselves.
In this interview, Testaments talk openly about how they write, how they listen to each other on stage, and why they believe vulnerability is a form of strength. They share their thoughts on staying sincere in a fast moving music world, building a real connection with audiences, and bringing experimental jazz to a new generation of listeners who are searching for music that makes them feel something real.
Testaments move between songwriting, improvisation, and experimental jazz. When you begin working on new music, what helps you decide how free or structured a piece should be?
I think that, in general, a more complex subject matter which requires more lyrical elaboration will tend toward greater structure. The more varied and detailed melodic writing in particular limits the amount of space for elaboration by a singer. Our most structured songs, like ‘Make Me Eternal’ and ‘The Clown’ are ones where I wrote all the lyrics before deciding on a single note. ‘Mountain Stream’, by contrast, started as an instrumental composition and our version involved very little planning of the arrangement. You can hear that in how different the two takes are although they were recorded one after the other. Even those structured songs have become more loose in their arrangement with subsequent live performances, and we’ve been able to find more and more ‘pockets’ within the composition for spontaneous moments.
‘Ae Fond Kiss (Never Run Dry)’ combines the elaborate lyrics with freedom in arrangement, and that’s one where every performance is noticeably different. Unlike our other songs, there is no predetermined melody and Rebecka, our singer, improvises with a poem. This means she has complete freedom in her phrasing. Although it’s a different approach it has the same goal as the more structured writing in ‘Make Me Eternal’. That is, to allow the lyrics to speak and convey the song’s emotion and theme.
Your music feels strongly shaped by live interaction. What usually happens in the room when a song starts to come alive through collective playing rather than planning?
In simple terms: one of us makes a choice within the performance and the rest of the band reacts. We could be playing a song at one tempo, but if our drummer Sam decides to play at another tempo in that moment we all have a choice in how to react. Should I move to where he is? Should I continue where we are and sit in that rhythmic tension? Should I stop and remove myself from the texture? These are the kinds of questions that are unique to live improvised music, and particularly in the context of such deep trust with the other musicians. This kind of dynamic is one of my favourite things about our music.
Jazz has always evolved by responding to its time. In what ways does Testaments reflect the world you are making music in right now?
In my notes for ‘Make Me Eternal’, I wrote something like “there should be ZERO cynicism here” and that’s an explicit aim throughout my writing. Cynicism is something I notice all around me in the people I meet and the music I hear. I think it’s understandable why people would be cynical, but I explicitly don’t want the characters and themes in Testaments’ songs to be that way. This is one example of what it means that we’re making “romantic” jazz, and why I think it has the potential to be so aesthetically valuable to people in the world right now.
Part of observing the world around you is coming to a view of which aspects of that world you like and value and which you reject. I don’t think that as an artist this means orienting yourself in opposition to things, but conceptualising the things you reject as a foil in order to more deeply understand, honour and cherish the things you do value and want to portray art.
Some listeners are new to experimental or jazz-influenced music. What do you hope draws them in first when they hear a Testaments track?
I think that the first thing which draws people into our music is the unique sound and combination of timbres. In particular, the vocals and euphonium seem to really connect with people right away. The lyrics, the literary aspect of a song, take more time to process whereas the sound and timbres can connect with an audience instantly. Ideally someone will first think “I’ve never heard sounds like this” and then later, after going deeper think “I’ve never heard lyrics like this”.
Even without traditional song forms, your music still tells a story. How do you think about guiding the listener from beginning to end of a piece?
I think as a songwriter, it’s important to think of the words as being sung by a character who exists from the beginning of the song to the end. It’s a bit like the figure in a painting who only exists in that small space. While some songs tell a story in the sense of a series of events, I think what’s more fundamental is presenting a character and giving the audience the means to empathise with that character. By that I mean to experience what’s at stake for them emotionally. The primary way to guide the listener is by making it clear in the lyric what’s at stake for the character that’s singing and why what they’re saying matters.
Lyrics sit clearly at the center of your sound. How do you make sure the words remain meaningful and easy to connect with, even when the music becomes complex?
I actually think that, counterintuitively, the lyrics are what help the music to remain coherent as it becomes increasingly complex and experimental. No matter how dissonant the music becomes, the worlds still hold the same essential meaning. As a bandleader, part of why I’m so comfortable giving the band freedom to experiment with the music is that I have no worry that the meaning of the song is going to be lost. Every word in a song is there for a reason, and the meaning of those words is what sets the emotional context that musical experimentation can exist within.
The euphonium is not a common instrument in modern bands. What does it allow you to express that might not be possible with more typical instrumentation?
I think, importantly, it’s not just the instrument but the instrument as played by the specific musician. Cameron’s sound on the Euphonium is unique to him and he’s the kind of improvisor who can generate almost endless ideas. His skillset is really one-of-one and it’s integral to our sound.
Timbrally, The euphonium has a softer attack than the trombone, its closest common relative, and I think that allows it to blend with the vocal in a different way. For example, in ‘Contemplation’, the vocal and euphonium harmonise with complimentary “breathy” timbres such that the clarity of the vocal isn’t lost. Layers of both sounds combine similarly at the end of ‘Ae Fond Kiss (Never Run Dry)’. These sounds are only possible because we have the Euphonium, and because we have Cameron in particular playing it.
In a music industry focused on speed, content, and numbers, what does success look like for a band like Testaments?
Success for us means building a real fanbase for our music who to listen, come to shows and are dedicated enough to spend the money that will sustain the project into the future. This is part of why I think the visual element of the band is so important: I want a Testaments show to be unlike anything else you’ll see, and I want to find fans who come to us for an experience they can’t get anywhere else.
Live performances seem to create a strong emotional response from audiences. What do you think makes a Testaments show feel different from simply listening to the recordings?
I think live music has a unique value that can’t be captured in recordings. The music is being created in real time and as a listener you don’t know what happens next, you can’t know. After you’ve listened to a recorded version once, you can’t experience it as novel again whereas, at least in the kind of music we make, every live show has a large element of novelty.
Experiencing music with other people in the room also brings something unique. You get to experience the thing you love being appreciated on a greater scale.
I have ambitions to experiment more and more with the visual element of our stage show, particularly as we play at larger venues. Going forward I want to have different lighting, images and videos bring projected, and even different costumes on stage. These kind of things aren’t typical to jazz shows, but why not? Live performance has the potential for a far greater visual experience. Live music is a performing art and what we see with our eyes matters.
As the band continues to grow, what kind of future do you imagine for Testaments in terms of sound, audience, and place within today’s music scene?
With every live performance we I notice a greater degree of comfort with experimentation and trying new things on stage. You asked before about the balance between structure and freedom in our songs, and I would predict that when we next record in a studio context, the kind of freedom we have on stage will be present in our recordings much more than those we’ve released so far.
My goal as far as audience has become to bring the kind of experimental jazz we make to a younger audience which hasn’t typically been exposed to this music. I’ve found that these are the people who are most open to new music and desperate to find art that makes them feel something new. When I first started thinking about marketing this music, I thought of our sound as appealing to three groups: fans of vocal jazz, fans of experimental modern jazz and fans of songwriting and lyrics.
I think platforms like TikTok have taught me that listeners nowadays think less about these kinds of genre categories and more about the kind of emotional experience a song provides. They’ll put one of our songs not so much on a playlist of jazz songs but on one with songs of different genre with the same mood or “vibe”. Recently someone on TikTok commented that our song was going on their “non-violent” playlist which is a different way of curating music for oneself than most musicians would be familiar with.
All this to say I want the band’s profile in the jazz scene to grow, but I have a sense that our biggest fans might not be the longtime jazz enthusiasts one might assume.
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