Listen to this track by pianist, world-traveler, arranger, and singer-songwriter Asia (pronounced Ah-sya) Mei. It’s an early single “Big Apple Tree”, the outlier to the new album released this past summer Introverse, and her second.

Asia was born in Russia, raised in Israel, and can now call herself a one-time New Yorker too. While traveling and honing her craft, she’s thrown her hand into many phases of music making, from writing, to arranging, to autotune editing for other artists in the studio.  The feelings of restlessness and movement comes through in her writing as well, full as it is of shadows and light, and boltered by playing that is the product of formal training at Boston’s Berklee School of Music.

Now in Boston with her musician husband Andres Wilson, all of her travels have culminated into this tune, a tale of reflection on the city of New York, as much a cultural presence as it is a physical one.

I exchanged emails with Asia about her career and about the Introverse record which was released this summer, and abetted by her growing fan base who helped her to fund it.

I asked her specifically about this song, which had been a single before it came to reside on the new record. This is what she had to say about it. Read more