"I start with an image in my mind and
then I make some words and a melody, the image is like a little seed which then
grows. I’ve always been very driven by
words so I will create the song around the words. They are my words that come to me from an
image. For example there’s a song I’ve
written called ‘Notes from an Opera’. I
must have read the story of Coco Chanel somewhere but I wasn’t conscious of
that, I had this image of a woman in wartime Paris, and she’s pampered and
spoilt. I followed her story and I found these words she would say in the image
I had as I followed her around Paris.
Then I sat down at the piano and started to sing the words. I think what this means for my music is that
it comes out more linear rather than cyclical, so it will have lots of
different bits as if it’s a sort of film, rather than it being verse, chorus,
verse, chorus. It’s more driven by
narrative. I’m writing about characters with a completely independent mind, I’m
outside of them and they are separate to me.
Sometimes I will sing them as “I” or sometimes as “she”. These are songs that emanate from my
imagination rather than being songs about me.
I compose the music through a process of filtering through many layers
of the story. I had piano lessons for a long time, I loved Bartok, Ravel,
Debussy. I sang opera from a young age, and learnt a lot of John Dowland and
Palestrina, very sparse music that was meant for harpsichord, I played it on
the piano while I sang and really loved the purity of that music. These days, as well as working with my band
I have a couple of large scale projects coming up that I’m looking forward to -
one is with an orchestra. I’m also
working with a choir in London, reviving a choral work I originally composed
for an Estonian choir." (Ana Silvera)
Ana will be performing with her band as part of the Markson Pianos Concert Series 7pm on June 27th at Saint Mary Magdalene Church, London NW1
Ana Silvera CD ‘The Aviary’ (KMC Records) is available from www.anasilvera.bandcamp.com
Connect with Ana
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