by Mike Lisching
In conversation with Dominique Fils-Aimé: My World is the Sun
In 2025, Dominique Fils-Aimé continued her rise as one of the most captivating voices in contemporary jazz music, breaking new ground with a series of major tours and electrifying live performances across North America, Europe, and South America. From festival stages to intimate concert halls, she brought audiences into the emotional heart of her 2023 album, Our Roots Run Deep. In the midst of touring, Dominique found time to record the second album in her second trilogy, My World Is the Sun. With two singles, “Going Home” and “The River”, previously released, My World Is the Sun will be available in its entirety on February 20.
In January, with Dominique at home in Montreal in the midst of her “winter wonderland”, we connected to discuss the sun, the moon, and her new album.
It feels amazing to be home. Just not living out of luggage is amazing. I’m very grateful that I get to travel so much… but it is definitely challenging. And very tiring, so when I get home, it’s just resting. There’s always work to do, but being able to do it from my couch, go see my mom every Sunday, and then have time to just appear at her house randomly. It makes me appreciate it even more now that I have to leave often.
With the album release around the corner, the work of rehearsing for the Sunshine Tour has already begun. My World is the Sun is the second album in a second trilogy of albums. While the modern music industry tends to focus on singles and short attention spans, Dominique has focused her creative desires around the concept of trilogies. She searches for “(listeners) that actually do want to dive deeper into a topic, want to get to know an artist on a long-term basis, and are willing to accompany me on a journey.”
The journey of this trilogy began with Our Roots Run Deep and was born out of the pandemic.
(the pandemic) allowed me to get a lot of plants, and have time to take care of them properly. I feel like whenever there’s a metaphor that works in nature, it often echoes as true for humans as well. So…the first metaphor for the first album that really stuck with me and drove a lot of the creation was the fact that we can’t see all the connections between the roots underground, but we discovered that they’re feeding each other, they’re talking to each other, they’re healing each other. To me, that was exactly how I feel about humans in general, the connection that we have with our ancestors, and with one another. We haven’t been able to quantify it tangibly yet; science is kind of dismissing it, but more and more, through quantum physics, we’re able to understand it and acknowledge its existence.
Anchored in the present, My World Is the Sun continues her “living diary”. Dominique describes this second trilogy as following her own personal evolution in real time, with each album shaped by a distinct color, chakra, and energetic “vibration.” Where the first album explored roots, ancestry, and interconnectedness through nature metaphors, this new compilation turns upward, toward light, clarity, and peace of mind.
The sun, the central metaphor: a symbol of love, warmth, and the choice to orient oneself toward possibility. Dominique draws inspiration from travel, especially the recurring experience of flying through cloud cover into clear skies. This physical phenomenon becomes a lens through which she explores mental and emotional heaviness, the weight of clouded judgment, anxiety, burnout, and the enduring presence of calm that exists above it all.
I’m very affected by rain, and we would leave a place that was rainy. And very quickly, the plane would be above the clouds. And the fact that every time we’re met with the same clear, sunny sky, The parallel between how we talk about having clouds… having clouded judgment, or feeling like there’s a cloud overhead, and the rain, and… And then it got me curious about the concept of peace of mind, rising your frequency above the noise and the chaos and the heaviness of that kind of mindset, the fact that you don’t see clearly when your judgment is clouded, and even clouds themselves.
It’s heavy, it’s hard, it’s… you’re battling something, whether it be physically through the heaviness of clouds, or mentally, when it’s dark thoughts, it is a difficult thing to get out of. The thing that gives me hope is the fact that no matter what there’s always a space above all this that remains clear, undisturbed, and peaceful, that we have access to. It’s just a matter of finding the strength to get over past that phase of heavy cloudedness.
Musically and conceptually, the album is structured like a full day, moving from sunrise to nightfall. It begins in a meditative, uplifting space, passes through the tensions and freedoms sought during the day, and lands gently into rest. For Dominique, the record is as much a tool for her own grounding and healing as it is an offering to listeners.
As I’m observing those different stages of the day, what do I feel I need to be my truest self and my most peaceful self. To recenter constantly, get back to that center, because the world can be very chaotic in many ways…
The subjects that talk to me the most are definitely everything that is around healing, freedom, joy; Remaining connected with our emotions and welcoming them as they are, welcoming ourselves as we are. So my message, or my hope, is that this album is also to encourage myself to welcome myself as I am, and show up as authentically as I can.
Her songwriting process remains deeply intuitive and meditative. Songs arrive through walking, quiet moments, or late-night stillness, often beginning with a melody captured in a voice memo. For this album in particular, she imposed a strict rule: any song that required overthinking or intellectual effort was discarded. What remains is music born purely from flow and channeling, which often results in mantra-like structures and emotional immediacy.
I’ll be walking, because I love walking, and a melody would pop, and I will voice memo it, so that can be one of the first steps. And sometimes I get excited, or I want to follow that thread, so I’ll go home, I’ll sit, and then I’ll make that melody, and then the rest piles up on it. So from that melody, maybe there’ll be a harmony that comes to mind, and then another layer of another rhythm, and another rhythmic line that comes to mind, and as they pile up, eventually words come out. And that’s why there’s often a format that is similar to mantras, because it’s what comes out.
Language plays a key role in that authenticity. While English feels more universal and musically instinctive due to her upbringing, French, her “mother tongue”, tends to carry her most intimate and precise expressions. Rather than deciding consciously, Dominique allows each song’s language to emerge naturally, discovering her own emotional state through the music after the fact.
I think that when I started music, my language, musically speaking, I was taught music through English. I mostly listened to English songs or American music, and it’s like my whole education happened through that. And therefore, it became the easiest way for me to express myself musically. But then, when some songs came in French, they definitely did kind of tap into another place. As if writing in English had something more universal, and writing in French had something more personal. in what I was sharing or expressing, or what emotion I was processing…
I often feel like I discover myself through the music I make, because since it kind of just happens, it’s when I sit back and listen later that it’s like another version of me, or a part of me, talking to the rest.
With French intros and outros to the album and the moving “Je t’aimais, Je t’aime, Je t’aimerais”, the album delivers deeply personal and authentic moments captured in song. “Echappée Belle” celebrates the joy in the mid-day, while “Je t’aimais, Je t’aime, Je t’aimerais” invites you to the quiet, contemplative moments before bed. It reminds me of her earlier composition in French, “Moi Je t’aime”, where the listener doesn’t need to speak French to feel the emotion. The last track on the album, with only a piano and Dominique’s voice… “Je t’aimais” leaves you with a sense of longing and shivers down your spine. Translated: “I loved you, I love you, I will love you”.
Dominique’s My World is The Sun feels like it comes from a place of joy and brings listeners along on her journey.
I find everything inspiring. There is definitely a special place for everything nature-related, elements in general: the sun inspires me, the moon, the trees, the wind… Conversations with other people, the way art makes us feel. Anyone who does something with passion or with love, no matter what it is, to me, that’s a form of art.
I stopped drinking coffee, but there was a girl who was always the one making my coffee every morning, and I could tell she was putting love in it. The art latte was still beautiful. That state of mind where people are doing things from a place that brings them joy, and therefore we can feel it and taste it with them, that’s something that I find inspiring. I want to help it blossom and see it shine everywhere as much as possible.
The album’s first single, “Going Home,” centers on the idea that we ourselves are “home”, and we can return to our inner center, calm the nervous system, and find peace amid constant movement. Created through an organic collaboration, the song resonates with the physical and emotional relief Dominique feels whenever she returns home from touring.
There is definitely the notion of ourselves being our homes, getting back in our center, and welcoming all the questioning that can happen within that center, or within ourselves. Going back to my authentic self, going back to my internal world…when you’re in your own space, it’s an easier place for me to meditate, and to feel at peace, and to feel connected to myself and able to have conversations with myself.
Melodic collaboration is implicit in the flow. Dominique arrives at recording sessions with complete songs but intentionally leaves space for other musicians, particularly trumpet and piano, to “sing” through their instruments. Improvisation and emotional alignment matter more than written parts, reinforcing the album’s focus on shared frequency and collective feeling.
I created space in advance, or there’s space that kind of appeared that I knew was gonna be meant for other musicians to also explore and improvise. Especially for the trumpet and the… the piano, they feel like other voices. I often feel like these melodic instruments are voices that want to sing too, so I wanted to allow space for them to sing as well, and to do it in a way that was not written in advance, but more felt from the moment when I would just share what the song was about, and the emotion that we’re trying to tap into, or that I felt when I was creating it, so that they could tap into that emotion as well, and sing with their instrument from that place. Also, so we would be coherent in the energy that we’re creating and the frequency that we’re trying to share.
Ultimately, My World Is the Sun is an affirmation of joy, healing, and self-acceptance as quiet but powerful forms of revolution. Dominique speaks openly about burnout, rest, and the importance of tending to oneself to show up compassionately in the world. Rather than prescribing a single path forward, she embraces plurality, believing change happens through many approaches at once, including art that invites listeners to pause, breathe, and reconnect with themselves.
As she looks ahead to the final chapter of the trilogy, Dominique resists planning in favor of attentiveness. Trusting life, intuition, and the creative process that has guided her so far, she remains rooted in the present, open to wherever the light leads next.
My World Is the Sun will be available in its entirety on February 20. Listen to Live At The Montreal International Jazz Festival (2025), and Our Roots Run Deep to prepare for the upcoming album.
Links
- Static & Blur – The River Release
- The River (Press Release)
- Going Home (First Single Release)
- Static & Blur – 2025 US Tour SF Bay Area Shows Coverage
Select Photos 2025 Northern California Shows
Monterey Jazz Festival
Blue Note Napa
SFJAZZ Joe Henderson Lab
