It’s Mei Semones’ world and we’re all simply residing in it. Nicely, it actually feels that manner once you’re at one in all her live shows and the room erupts in a vortex of jazz, indie pop, accompanying scat singing and threads of bossa nova. It’s humorous, feeling so overwhelmed by the technical prowess blasting from stage but melting completely into its magnetism.

However this Brooklyn-based guitar fanatic embodies style fusion in its truest kind, wielding her standard PRS McCarty 594 to supply spellbinding jazz-adjacent songs that construct from the muse Chet Baker laid down. And along with her full-length debut album Animaru a raging success, this Berklee alumna is nicely on her manner.

“One of many issues I like about jazz is that it values the person voice of a musician, and you actually need to have your personal voice and your personal sound,” Semones tells us from her dwelling in New York. “It’s a convention that individuals are studying from, and transcribing what different individuals have performed and taking that language to make it your personal… I don’t know, I simply actually like that a part of it.”

However it wasn’t at all times jazz guitar for Semones. The truth is, it wasn’t at all times guitar in any respect. At 4 years outdated she’d picked up the piano – a present from Grandma to Semones and her sister. However it didn’t really feel fairly… proper. “I switched to guitar once I was 11,” says Semones.

“I simply wasn’t having fun with piano as a lot anymore, and I watched this film known as Again to the Future.” A sly smile tugs knowingly on her lips earlier than she continues: “There’s that scene the place Marty McFly performs a Chuck Berry track and I believed it was actually cool. I wished to play electrical guitar due to that.”

Shining Mild

Nonetheless, it took a bit of longer to seek out the world of guitar the place Semones now feels most comfy. Though she’d expressed a brand new curiosity in studying guitar, she first needed to attempt nylon-stringed fashions, classical guitar and rock earlier than she settled on jazz in highschool. “My faculty had a very good jazz program, in order that’s once I bought into it and began writing my very own songs,” she says. Her songwriting and rapid expertise for the instrument shone proper by way of, incomes Semones a spot at Berklee shortly afterwards, which is when she moved from her dwelling city in Michigan to New York to begin a blossoming music profession.

When Guitar.com speaks to Mei Semones now, she’s simply completed a busy tour in Europe and is gearing as much as carry out in Japan earlier than ending the present run within the US. One of many issues her followers adore about her type is how one can hear grains of rock and chamber pop in each third or fourth bar when Semones’ PRS and her bandmate’s drums marry at simply the suitable quantity and ferocity. However the subsequent bar would possibly fall into this intoxicating jazz scale that Semones effortlessly mimics along with her weightless, dainty vocal. In reality, you by no means know what you’re going to get at a Mei Semones gig.

“Writing this manner comes fairly naturally to me,” says Semones after a pause. “I’m not essentially enthusiastic about mixing completely different genres to go from bossa nova to rock, say, as a result of I don’t actually consider that. I simply occur to take pleasure in these various kinds of music and so they’re additionally my influences. That’s what I’ve listened to and that’s what I’ve studied, so what comes out is only a mix of these issues collectively.”

Instruments For The Job

However as a lot as you’ll be able to credit score the songwriter and performer for creating such charismatic music, the participant should additionally choose the suitable instrument and tools that works finest for his or her type to get probably the most attuned end result. Semones is not any exception to this rule:

“My major guitar is the PRS McCarty 594, semi hole physique, largely due to the way it feels to play, the tone and the way comfy it’s. However my first electrical guitar was an Epiphone Les Paul, which my dad bought me. Not lengthy after that I went to a guitar constructing camp and made my very own Stratocaster-style guitar, which was my second one. Then I bought my first acoustic metal string guitar, which was a Hohner, and I nonetheless have it now.

“My dad then bought me an Ibanez Artcore guitar for highschool jazz earlier than I bought my PRS for school as a professional-grade guitar. We picked it up from Sweetwater at their headquarters in Indiana, which we drove to from Michigan, and we had been there for round eight hours as a result of I attempted out so many guitars.

“At first, I didn’t just like the chicken inlays on the neck of the PRS as a result of I believed it was a bit too flashy. However I simply fell in love with it as quickly as I performed it. Now, it’s most likely my favorite guitar I’ve ever had.”

It’s no surprise Semones loves her PRS a lot – it’s taken her from being a humble school pupil to a rising innovator, identified for writing authentic work orchestrated to suit each English and Japanese lyrics.

Since her debut EP Kabutomushi got here out in 2024, it’s been clear the 25-year-old is good at conveying emotions of platonic love in each languages. “Each really feel fairly pure, as a result of I really feel like I’ve been writing songs with lyrics in each languages for a great whereas now,” she says. “No matter pops into my head first or matches the melody higher in that second is what I am going for.”

Every part Semones releases feels solely authentic, and it’s fairly troublesome to seek out one other artist she immediately seems like. And when that’s the case with a musician, it may be fairly exhausting to guess who their inspirations had been rising up.

Semones has a great take into consideration her reply for this query earlier than she delves into one: “Once I was youthful, it was positively Nirvana for me,” she begins. “However when the Smashing Pumpkins happened, I’d say they had been the primary band I bought into that had been immediately much like my very own style. However aside from that, I take heed to quite a lot of jazz grades. I actually like [Thelonious] Monk and Charlie Parker and Wes Montgomery. There are these traditional [musicians] that lots of people love like Jim Corridor or Wayne Shorter as nicely, however on the flip aspect I actually take pleasure in João Gilbertoi who’s a Brazilian artist and an enormous affect for me.”

Evidently, there’s actually an amalgam of inspiration swirling across the music business. There are the traditional trailblazers Semones so aptly credit, plus new performers alike who’re inventing their very own pocket of style, however it’s exhausting to think about any jazz performer or comparable going with out crediting Chet Baker in some unspecified time in the future. In 2025, Semones contributed in the direction of a collaborative album, Chet Baker Re:imagined, which featured numerous different younger, inspirational musicians like Matilda Mann and dodie overlaying a few of Baker’s biggest hits.

“It was nice as a result of I truly love Chet Baker a lot,” says Semones of her expertise overlaying My Best for the document. “By way of vocal inspiration, Chet Baker is likely one of the huge ones. Alongside Gilbertoi, they’re my two major vocal inspirations, I’d say. So, I used to be so blissful once they reached out to me about [contributing to this record]. I had three choices for the songs I wished to choose, and My Best occurred to be one in all them. It’s truly my favorite track on Chet Baker Sings, so I used to be actually blissful about that.”

Having achieved a lot in her brief profession up to now, Semones desires to proceed reaching for the celebrities. However, on the identical time, she doesn’t have too many expectations as of but. “I simply wish to maintain going this manner and growing as a songwriter,” she says. “I assume the principle focus and my long-term purpose can be to proceed practising guitar and getting higher at it. I wish to be the most effective guitarist that I may be in my lifetime. Hopefully at some point I’ll get to the purpose the place I’m adequate at guitar to document a jazz trio album or one thing like that, as a result of I’d love to try this. Or, though it’s positively not time but, perhaps at some point I’ll get to do a jazz requirements album and have associates come on and have on it with me.

“I simply hope everybody can take heed to and luxuriate in my music. What makes me actually blissful is seeing youngsters at my present who’re there with their dad and mom, as a result of I feel that’s actually candy. And typically I’ll get to fulfill followers who’re studying the guitar and say my music is inspiring them to do it, and that makes me actually blissful. Music may be attention-grabbing to everybody, of all ages too, and I simply adore it.”