Part 1

Name: Chiara D'Anzieri aka Santa Chiara
Nationality: Italian  
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist
Current release: Santa Chiara's IMPORTED is out via Kill Rock Stars.
Recommendations: Scriabin Preludes Op. 11 played by Mikhail Pletnev; Joan Didion - The white album

If you enjoyed this Santa Chiara interview and would like to keep up to date with her music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, Facebook, and bandcamp.  



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

When I listen to music I generally just let imagination do its thing. I could picture things, I could just imagine things that can easily look like a more realistic representation of feelings / emotions. Whatever the music is calling up to me. To let it evoke what it wants.

I could see colors but it might more just a general feel for it. I also don’t listen with my eyes closed because the combination of my environment and the music I’ve been listening to can work at the same time to provide me a better experience.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

I went to conservatory. I was told how to be an interpreter in the first place. To pay so much respect to the immense musicians and Maestri that I had the honour and pleasure to put myself next to. None of us will ever - in my opinion - be at the same level as some of the great composers we (hopefully) all know. I don’t really think the two categories can even be compared, we are competing in separate leagues and that is just ok and fine by me.

Being a classical musician in the first place is such a beautiful and rich thing to me and for me. Like I said, went to conservatory and that was my very first step in music. I studied as I should for 10 years, went through music theory, solfeggio and harmony, did it all and still I feel as if I don’t know much really. That's just a humble way of saying that I was very good at playing cello but in order to be the great interpreter I needed to be for me to become a part of that world is a different thing.

I think no one should be self declaring themself artists, it is a bit too much to handle, it’s a big responsibility. When I was very young I do remember my parents getting called from one of my music teachers and talking about me using that word, using it with the purpose of convenience - how good I was making music, not only playing it. Sometimes when I do it, when I call myself an artist, it do it just because that is the lingo. But I feel overwhelmed by self declaring myself to be one.

I do not know if someone can train/learn to be an artist. I genuinely don’t think it is possible because it is not just about the music, it is not just about the paint or the words, the photos or the visual art you are producing. It is a whole thing.

This is one of the best question I’ve ever received by the way.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?  

Music at that age was basically everything to me. I was still very naive, believing I could be something big in it. I was ready to discover, ready to learn, ready to bed confident. I was so confident in it.

Music was the first thing I did in the morning and I did it until I fell asleep. I mean this in the literal way: I used to put on Beethoven's Razumovsky quartet number 1 every single night to fall asleep. I did this for a very long time for about 10 years. But then again, music was so much my everything that it was ok for me to even dream about music I was studying or just thinking about ti all the time.

This was also the time when I discovered jazz and let me tell you, it was something that spiced up my conception of what music should’ve been quite a bit. At the same time, I was learning about pop music, bare with me, pop intended as popular, not as pop music as we use that term now. My parents provided a lot of goods when it came to this: folk, country, rock, americana, Italian singer songwriters, lots of goods.

I am forever grateful to have been in a house where music was and still is recognized as something as important as food - or even more as important as the air, perhaps.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I observe a lot. I also absorb a lot - a little too much indeed. A picture can give me something to write about, a person, a feeling, a sentiment, a place, a city, pretty much anything as long as I can use it to either create a story to convey a message or to fabbricate a story with the sole intention of using that story to write a lyric.

I don’t necessary need to use personal experiences fact by fact. I can bring a personal experience and fabricate a complete different story using reality as inspiration in order for me to telling something bigger through that story. I don’t normally like to talk about big social and political matters, at least not in a direct way, I could observe them and fabricate something that is more tangible, relatable.

I could easily get inspired by movies or documentary or other music for sure.

How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment – is it an extension of your self/body, a partner and companion, a creative catalyst, a challenge to be overcome, something else entirely?

Oh well, I suppose it depends on the instrument. My cello is now something that could give me happiness and joy but also anxiety and distress. But it depends on me, the instrument itself is always my favorite thing.

The reason why I am saying this is because sometimes our mental state or frame of mind can influence everything. Memories, traumas, or beautiful experiences totally direct how I feel about the instrument I play. All my secondary instruments are much more chill when it comes to it. Probably because they didn’t have the same pressure and type of commitment that choosing the cello had. I envision that instrument as my biggest accomplishment but also my biggest failure.

[Read our Redi Hasa interview about Interpretation and Arranging Nirvana for the Cello]
[Read our Clarice Jensen interview about the cello]
[Read our Theresa Wong feature about the cello]

Guitar? Something I can have fun with, just a friend. Bass? The best, I love playing bass so much, I can be a virtuoso and no one cares, no one is ever paying attention to me, everyone is either looking at “second guitar dude doing vibe” or “frontman doing solo” or, even worst “frontman doing nothing.” Meanwhile I am keeping the whole ship afloat with the drummer and no-one cares, it is actually fantastic. I am having a party with my self and my musicianship.

Drums? Simply so fun, the very funny friend you hang out with when you need to just feel better. Piano? Someone I really like but can’t quite get a hold of. I play it nicely but it doesn’t come second nature for me. My hands are small and I like to play it my own comfortable way, my fingering used to drive my teachers insane because didn’t male any sense for them - it did make sense for me, I was the one with tiny hands!

Are you acting out certain roles or parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? If not, what, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

Interestingly enough I don’t really have predominant parts of my personality which are left out only when I make music or I am on stage because luckily enough I embrace being very weird and corck. I am very much into saying whatever I think should be said even if might cost something. So I feel that this way of being shows up in my music, somehow.

I don’t really know how to respond properly to this question because the truth is, every time I write a song, the song just happens and so I have no time to put in ideas and thoughts. If it flows and it feels good and makes sense it is done.

Most of the time, if I try to gather ideas and thoughts and then build around it, it won’t happen. Nothing will come out.