Jessie Leov Music

New year, new opportunities #2019

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Having already made our way into the second month of the New Year, I feel like it’s time to stock of what has happened so far.

January was an interesting month. It wasn’t as productive as I had hoped but that may have been due to the New Year holiday period, my mid-month 8-day trip to the North Island, and my 4-day stint in Christchurch/Auckland at the end of the month.

Despite my travels I did a couple of gigs with my solo singer/pianist hat on and also completed a few projects for clients. I was fortunate to be contracted to compose and produce the music for this short promo video for Little Pig Building Company, created by Lifeform Labs.

It was a great experience and I hope to continue building up a portfolio of music for screen this year. My goal is to start gaining professional experience in the screen industry (film/TV) as I would love to get into production sound or post-production music/sound. This year is all about searching for opportunities and saying yes!

While I’m currently based in Nelson, I’ll be taking a 5-day trip to Auckland/Hawkes Bay to reunite with my quartet, run some school workshops and rehearse for the upcoming Sweet Adelines Quartet contest in Dunedin which we’re competing in for the third time.

Alongside this I’ll be working on finishing the score for my musical theatre collaboration ‘Take Back The Universe’, with my friend and playwright/composer/songwriter/musician Marlon Richards, which will be getting some workshop exposure later this year! This will take place in Wellington where I’m most likely heading sometime in the coming months.

Basically I have plenty to keep me occupied, most of which doesn’t bring in much dosh at this very moment but I’m willing to keep putting in the hard yards and build up my network so I can live that freelance self-employed creative life! That’s all for now Xx

String quartet ‘threads’ – premiere

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I was lucky enough to have my string quartet piece ‘threads’ performed as part of the final concert of the annual Nelson Composer’s Workshop run by the Composers Association of New Zealand, held at the Nelson Centre of Musical Arts in July this year. It was a super interesting experience getting to see the musicians rehearsing my piece – seeing which bits were tricky and needed tweaking, what came together quickly, and how the piece came across in general when performed live.

I’m looking forward to having my orchestra piece ‘the wilds’ workshopped by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the end of November as part of their Todd Corporation Young Composer Awards.

COMPOSING REEL

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Here is compilation of clips featuring my original music, written for the documentary Birds of a Feather by Working Edge Pictures. I was able to collaborate with director Nina Wells to write some tracks for this piece, and it was a superb learning experience for me. I worked from guide tracks that she sent, and wrote a bunch of different tracks mostly centered around piano, that fit in with different scenes from the film. Hoping it’s the first of many such collaborations that I get to experience :)

The full-length tracks can be found on my soundcloud here.

GRAMMYS GALORE!

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A few of my absolute favourite musicians have just won Grammys! Time to celebrate!

Jacob Collier

I’ve been rather obsessed with this young jazz sensation since a few years ago when my music lecturer showed us one of his youtube videos. JC has since continued to create incredibly innovative re-imaginings of classic songs as well as releasing his self-written, recorded and produced album In My Room – which has now got him two Grammys! NO-ONE DESERVES THEM MORE! He’s been touring the world with his one-man show for months now…… definitely on my must-see-live list.

 

 

Pentatonix

I’ve been a huge fan of this a cappella quintet ever since seeing them win The Sing Off in 2011. They’ve only conquered the ENTIRE WORLD since then and continue to bring a cappella into the mainstream music scene! Their Christmas albums in particular are to die for.

 

Snarky Puppy

This jazz ensemble has been on my radar for the past year or so ever since their collab with Lalah Hathaway went ‘viral’. I’ve brought myself up to speed with their music by listening pretty obsessively since then and their latest album TOTALLY deserved this Grammy award. Big dream of mine to see them live one day!

We came 5TH at the 2016 Sweet Adelines International competition in Vegas!

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As a Sweet Adelines member you can be a member of more than one chorus and at the current time I am a member of:

  1. Greater Auckland chorus (currently on long term leave as I’m overseas)
  2. Christchurch City Chorus (I’ve been an Out of Town member [OOTM] since Jan 2016)
  3. Lions Gate Chorus (I just moved to Vancouver to study)

Let’s just say I kind of like singing barbershop and being involved in this organisation…… just a little bit!

Christchurch City Chorus  has been preparing to travel to Las Vegas to represent NZ at the international Sweet Adelines Competition and compete against around 30 odd choruses from around the world (after winning the NZ national competition in 2015).

As an OOTM, I attended coaching weekends on average once a month from January to August (sneakily flew to Canada at the end of August) and then reunited with the ladies in Vegas on October 13th for the contest.

My delightful Mama is also a member so I got to spend the 10 days in Vegas with her! Who could possibly wish for more!

This was my second time at the annual international competition after competing with Greater Auckland Chorus in October of last year (see blog post here).

It was a CRAZY 10 days. Most of us arrived on Thursday 13th and we then spent the next 6 days rehearsing for 5-6 hours a day. It was exhausting but exhilarating! We had our favourite coaches coming in to work with us – Darlene Rogers, Lynne Smith and Lea Beverly, along with short appearances from Ryan Heller, Jim + Renee and other celebrities!

We had a joint show on the Tuesday night with Rönninge Chorus 0our directors have been good friends for many years and this joint concert has become a tradition. We performed our semi-finals and finals packages which was a great test run. It was a real pleasure and, of course, we were all blown away by Rönninge.

Long story short, semifinals day came along, we hit the stage in our green dresses (pictured below – spot me and my mother behind me to the left) and after a NERVE WRACKING announcement of the ten finalists, we were announced as contest #10 in the finals! Oh the agony of having to sit through the announcement of the nine other finalists and not knowing if ours would come next…. I don’t know if I have ever been in such a nervous state IN.MY.LIFE.

Friday was spent rehearsing for the finals and Saturday was another early morning to do our make-up, have breakfast, get our hair styled, warm-up, rehearse and get back on the stage! We were so pumped to get out there and perform the package that we’d been preparing for so long. And we nailed it. The reaction from the crowd was amazing. It was over so quickly and we couldn’t be any prouder of how it went.

Another long story short, we received 5TH PLACE and the MOST ENTERTAINING CHORUS AWARD! Our director Virge put an unspeakable amount of time and effort into conceptualising the finals package and bringing it to life, it was honestly her baby, so it was such a treat for her to be able to go up and receive that award. We were super happy! It was the end of a magical time spent with the amazing ladies of CCC.

I look forward to the next time I have the opportunity to learn, grow, sing and perform with this wonderful group of women. But for the next 6 months I will be singing with the Lions Gate Chorus in Vancouver – I’m so ready to learn from them! xx

 

The Nelson gang ready to perform in the Finals!

**ADVICE for future competitors who will compete at the MGM Grand – the air is VERY DRY. There is air conditioning everywhere (and cigarette smoke near the casinos). We were advised to leave the air conditioning on in our rooms while we were away and turn it off when we get back, and keep it off at night. I went as far as to bring a humidifier with me to leave on 24/7 in our room. Sickness spread through our chorus far and wide unfortunately, I managed to avoid it myself ONLY JUST – by non-stop hydrating, taking multitudes of vitamins, washing my hands a lot, trying to still eat fruit and vegetables over the 10 days, and just generally looking after myself very carefully. Unfortunately a number of our chorus were struck down with a terrible flu. Some disturbingly effective steroids of some kind allowed them to still get on stage with us. Most important thing: look after yourself and keep those vocal cords MOIST!

 

 

 

Incredible week at the Canadian Rockies!

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Only two days after my flight across the world to an unknown land, I embarked upon a very exciting trip to the CANADIAN ROCKIES! Prepare yourselves for an onslaught of photos of magnificent landscapes.

I went on this trip with a fellow UBC exchange student, Erica from Belgium, who I had met the day before…. but we had organised the trip through Facebook the week before. Ah, the joys of the internet!

After a 13-hour bus trip to Banff and a very deep sleep, the highlight of our first day was Sulphur Mountain. I quickly developed a love-hate relationship with this mountain. It’s extraordinarily steep and I nearly died walking up it…… but at the top was the MOST STUNNING view I had ever seen in my life. Little did I know what the rest of the week would bring…

The view of Banff township from the top of Sulphur Mountain

That night we got our rental car, which involved a little drama but luckily everything worked out, drove to our Lake Louise campground and spent our first glorious night (of four) sleeping in the car. It was COLD. Note to self, next time bring extra blankets even though it’s summer..

The next day we did a massive 6-hour hike at Lake Louise to the Plain of 6 Glaciers via Lake Agnes.

This hike was full of ups and downs (geologically and mentally), rain and shine, a lot of sweating uphill climbing, but best of all – beautiful and awe-inspiring nature. The struggle is all part of the journey and there was definitely a lot of struggle but each time we reached a milestone it felt so so worth it. Pictured below is our view of Lake Agnes after walking right around it and then up a steep incline. It felt SO GOOD to reach that point. Pictured just above  is us feeling triumphant after finally arriving back at the Lake after our long hike.

Down below is Lake Agnes….. had to include the magical rainbow shot <3

We then high-tailed it to Lake Moraine before we lost our motivation to move. We did a lovely short hike along the side of the lake, as pictured on the right of the picture below. At this point the post-Lake-Louise-hike endorphins were starting to drop but I told Erica to take her time as she still had muchos energy to take pics of the wonderful view!

One of Erica’s many stunning shots taken on her magical iPhone
A very wet morning visit to Takkakaw Falls

The next day, we rose early after a delightful night of sleep in the car and drove down to Yoho National Park to explore. As seen to the right, our first stop was Takkakaw Falls…. very wet :P

We also visited the beautiful Emerald Lake as seen below and did the loop hike around the Lake. It had stopped raining by this point which was a bonus. To be quite honest, it was bringing down the mood a little!

Finally we did a short hike to the Wapta falls that day, before making our way through the Icefields Parkway to Jasper.

Emerald Lake

To the left you will see our sleeping arrangements in the Whistlers campground on our second to last night. This is basically what all four of our camping nights looked like :P

Our Jasper day turned out to be absolutely MAGNIFICENT as you can see from the panorama below! It started out cloudy and we first visited the Mt Edith Cavell and then did a hike to the Maligne canyon and back. We certainly managed to fit in a huge amount of activities into the 5 days we had… mainly thanks to Erica, adventurer extraordinaire!

The captivating view from the top of Old Fort Point in Jasper.

With our pal Ken who we gave a ride through the Icefields Parkway to Lake Louise village.

Our last day consisted of the drive back through the Icefields Parkway to Banff for our overnight bus back to Vancouver. We picked up a cool hitch-hiker called Ken who came along with us as we stopped at various spots along the way. We (or me, at least) were a little worn down by this point – a long bus ride, four nights of (minimal) sleep in the front seat of a car, and a LOT of physical activity! But truth be told, by the time we got back to Banff, I did not want to leave. I REALLY did not want to leave this magical place.

NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: As fate would have it….. this would not be the only trip to the Rockies that I took to the Rockies that year! I went again in winter in December and had a White Christmas and it was incredible <3

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