As Ziggy Alberts pulls over to chat, he's in Hawaii with a van full of surfboards. Within a week, he'll be on a different coast: in Victoria, singing songs about campfires, surfing, new love and finding oneself, as part of his New Love global tour at the Victoria International TD JazzFest for a June 23 show at Royal Theatre.
A popular singer-songwriter from Australia whose music is far from jazz, it's perhaps a surprise to see him on the lineup, but not completely so. Alberts has a large following in Victoria, where he previously played a sold-out summer Capital Ballroom show in 2023, prompting an additional second Victoria date for his 2023 world tour. His jazziest song is one called Rewind, a warm and sexy ballad with bossa nova vibes, which was the name of 2023's tour that reached 57,087 people across 82 shows around the world.
A surfer, Alberts is an ocean lover at heart with music and poetry that is often compared to the likes of Jack Johnson and Xavier Rudd. It’s no surprise that he resonates with the coastal community of Vancouver Island.
"It's really nice to have the support somewhere like Victoria because I just like spending time there. Total synergy with the place," he said. "I've even got school friends, Australians, who have moved just out to Victoria for that same reason."
Alberts also has family living here including cousins, a few of which choreographed and danced in the New Love music video.
Nearing 30 years old, Alberts said New Love is a call to being willing to dream, but it also reflects on the positive changes that have come to his personal and touring life that he attributes to meditation, yoga and the break from touring the pandemic afforded him.
"I feel like I've never brought a better show to people than I have now, in the sense I've never been able to be as present and with as much energy as I have for the crowd as I do now. And I would say I'm in the best health of my life."
But fame doesn't come without its pressures, a topic on which Alberts is candid about the weight he feels.
"I feel an immense amount of pressure for myself to try and be the absolute best version of myself every day on and off camera," he admitted. "I want to be the person that I dream I could be. Some days, like all of us, you're very close and sometimes you fall short. And some days you're mad or sad or angry. But when I think about the fact that I'm in people's lives, you just want to live to your own highest expectation and really follow through."
An area where he wants to meet his expectations is his ongoing commitment to environmental activism. He expresses it's something that is important to him but fell on the backburner during the pandemic.
"It's been such a crazy transition," Alberts said. "We had some super clear activism with touring. I feel like we've fallen a little bit behind ever since coming back to world tours since COVID, besides a certain amount of restrictions around what we can and can't do. It's just felt chaotic."
Despite these challenges, Alberts is eager to reintegrate activism into his life. One cause that stands out for him is the Great Barrier Reef Legacy, an organization dedicated to preserving the coral diversity of the Great Barrier Reef.
The organization is collecting and housing a Biobank of different species of coral to ensure their survival in the future. Their goal is to collect all 800 species of coral from around the world.
Alberts had the opportunity to visit the project, which he and his team have supported financially over the years.
"Their results are amazing, because corals are asexual and reproduce with certain climatic conditions," he explained. "They're almost, in some ways, immortal. If you can keep them alive, you can take little bits of coral and put another sea bank together halfway across the world to protect the diversity."
Despite all the travelling, success, and weight that may sometimes come with it, Alberts is constantly striving to stay true to himself and express that truth.
Alberts recently released Outlaw, a song that he describes as very honest. In May 2024, he published Sun memos, the second self-published poetry book that gives an introspective and vulnerable look into his life as a musician on the road.
It seems he places the highest value on people gaining positive experiences from his music and perhaps that’s why it’s so important for him to find a positive place within himself.
"When I get stories like people telling me that they play my music till their baby falls asleep or being the most requested artist at the birthing ward at my local hospital... those are the highest compliments in the world," he said.
As he prepares for his upcoming performances at JazzFest and beyond, Alberts is geared up for another huge year and more sun chasing, as he channels his experiences into music that he can give back to his fans.
"I'm just trying to bring as much of myself into music and honesty of my experience of the world to try and channel it and give it back out. It's a trippy thing when you already have more than you could ask for in the world."
