Electra

www.hitquarters.com/Electra

United Kingdom - Rock, Alternative - Contact

For full details and pics visit: www.mgck.co.uk

Born in Manhattan to a Vogue-model mother and a surgeon father. Studied music, (piano, flute, clarinet), dancing (ballet and modern) and played various instruments (flute, clarinet and yes, even the triangle) at school and was a member of the dreaded Glee Club.
Moved to Barcelona at the age of 15, and studied ballet, French, and belly dancing. After a year there, returned to New York to continue with voice, dance and drama studies. At 17 a teacher from Julliard guided me towards opera. I continued for 3 years with opera, dance, and drama studies plus a one-year Studio Engineering course at New York University, but my passion was for harder, more immediate, less 'techniqued' music.
Relocated to London so I could be near classic British Rock roots. Joined bands, and moved into session singing through The London Booking Agency. Worked professionally with many different songwriters and producers; some talented, some not, but most often with songwriter/producer Craig Pruess (at the time he was writing/producing for Cliff Richard, amongst others). Due to my training I could emulate almost any vocal style, yet was never fully satisfied singing other writer's sentiments and lyrics. (One song, "Survivor" for Nick Mason of Pink Floyd for a film soundtrack, was a pleasure to perform). Soon Craig and one of his writing partners, Rick Fenn (ex 10CC guitarist) began to write specifically for me and although beautifully produced, the music they were writing at the time ran straight down the white line in the middleof the road and was not right for me.
Formed a band (Dead Easy) with guitarist Ian Jones (he co-wrote"Blitzkrieg", a track Metallica covered). Our manager, Paul Loasby, helped us put together a deal to produce an album for licensing. We had members of Faith No More, Metallica and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath guesting on that project, but the recordings were never mastered and the deal fell apart.
Sometime during the end of that period I got divorced and drifted from what we liked to call 'sophisticated' (the Thinking Man's) Heavy Metal into Dance/techno/trance. On that part of the journey, I felt too many samples of my voice were being taken and the music was going round and round and coming out nowhere. Moved to Edinburgh and began working on a project with dance/R&B producer Dave Galbraith (Wanderlust Music). Concurrently, I was hired as a session singer fronting 'The Steve Martland Band'; a 40-piece brass band with lyrics. We opened the South Bank Festival in London at the Queens Hall and a week later performed for Prince Charles at the Princes Trust in a rugby pitch in the Rhonda Valley, Wales.

Following that, I left the UK and music for 5 years: visited Hong Kong, lived and married again in Singapore, spent time in Australia and 3 years in San Francisco, where I managed the Vorpal Gallery - the largest fine art gallery in SF - for about a year and a half. Got divorced a second time. Came back to London for the total eclipse of the sun on 11 August 1999 and the next day went up to Edinburgh for the Festival. In Edinburgh - I met and fell in love with the man who encouraged me to write music again. The songs CRAWL and I HAVE BEEN A FOOL which inspired film-short : 'Memorie', by Vala Cliffton, are some of the 50-60 songs I've written and produced during this period, working entirely alone. I now own my songs.

 In the last year (2003) I have been a finalist in the UK Songwriting Competition (check Contestants News page), and been invited to perform at the New York Int'l Music Festivals in New York (Madison Sq Garden, 2-3 April 03) Las Vegas (Palms Hotel, 23-25 Jul 03) and Los Angeles (Laemmle Fairfax Theatre, 20-25 Sept 03)and again New York (Madison Sq Garden, 6 Nov 03).