Jessie Leov Music

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MUST-LISTEN new collab from Jacob Collier!

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That’s right…… two incredible musical acts have joined forces to create the above MASTERPIECE. If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly suggest you click play.

Jacob Collier is a young jazz prodigy from London, raised with music in his blood – he can play pretty much any instrument, creates intricate a cappella arrangements, writes authentic and fresh original music, and also wrote, recorded and produced his album In My Room in. his. room.

Snarky Puppy is a musical collective led my Michael League who play groovy instrumental music and, for their albums Family Dinner Vols 1 & 2, collab with singers and make awesome tracks such as this one. They’ve been around since 2004 and have released many many albums, toured the world a bunch of times and continue to make addictively fresh sounds.

I think what makes these artists stand out from the crowd, in my opinion at least, (other than talent, hard work, general creativity) is innovation, authenticity, a never-ending passion for music and a commitment to create music that genuinely stirs their souls. And then they give us the pleasure of being able to hear that music, for which I am eternally grateful.

Look out for more fantastic tracks from these guys!

 

 

 

 

 

My music is coming to your screens!

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Hey everyone,

Hope you have had a fantastic first month of 2016!

Check out the BRAND NEW trailer for Birds of a Feather by Working Edge Productions – a documentary I wrote some music for last summer. Doesn’t it look great?! And the first piece of music you hear in the trailer is one of my tracks… *jumps up and down excitedly*. Let me tell you, this is a maaaassive buzz for me!

I hope this is the first of many such projects that I can get involved with in the future!

The documentary is about an annual boat race held on the Waikato river each year, the Great Waikato Seagull race, where people race using British Seagull outboard motors – which date back to WWII and were once known as ‘the best outboard motors in the world’.

Birds of a Feather is a Silver Award winner for the Spotlight Documentary Film Awards 2015 and an Official Selection Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival 2016. There will be a DVD release of the documentary and it will hopefully be appearing on our TV screens sometime in the future.

It was actually a whole year ago (last summer) that I spent many hours composing the pieces I contributed to the documentary. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to get involved in this project. Hard work reaps rewards!

On a side note, you may notice I have revamped my website – it really needed a renovation and I’m pretty happy with where it’s at now.

There’s a new biography page which contains some exciting little tidbits about what 2016 is bringing – do check it out!

I’m so looking forward to having more awesome musical experiences this year and making the most of every opportunity I can get my hands on. In the meantime, I am enjoying the lovely summer weather in Nelson before I head to back to Auckland in a couple of weeks.

I hope you’re all enjoying the sun!

Until next time,

Jessie Xx

Post-Vegas competition recap!

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Hey all,

My final exam of the year is over and I will soon be heading back to Nelson for the summer! Very excited about it! Feels like a lifetime since I’ve been home even though it’s only been nine weeks. I’ve worked extra hard this semester, especially since I had time off from uni when I travelled to America, and I’m hoping the work will pay off when I get my final grades back.

Just in case you’re wondering – I do have two more years of university before I’m finished!

I’ll graduate in 2018 with a Bachelor of Music majoring in Composition and a Bachelor of Arts majoring in French. My current plans involve spending one of my remaining two years studying on exchange in Canada, but more about that at a later date ;) In Nelson I’m looking forward to spending time with my family, doing some gigs and going on some more hiking trips and getting back to this amazing scenery. Although the snow may be gone by now! Photo credit: LifeformLabs.

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It’s been about a month since I returned from my trip to Las Vegas where I competed with Greater Auckland Chorus at the Sweet Adelines International Convention! The chorus achieved a score improved by 120 points since they last competed internationally and improved their world ranking by one place so overall it was a very successful experience.

I spent 9 days there and witnessed some truly incredible performances – the highlights being the days of the quartet and chorus finals. I did have a bad case of the flu for the majority of the trip unfortunately so I was holed up in the hotel most of the time! I didn’t let it ruin the trip though and I’m so stoked I got to go and have my first international convention experience with Greater Auckland Chorus this year. Bring on the next one!! In the meantime check out the little gallery below with some great shots which captured the fun memories of us having a blast on stage! Thanks to Read Photography.

A massive thanks again to everyone who helped me get to America! Your contributions are the reason I was able to make it over there and I am so grateful for that! The ladies of Nelson Bays Harmony Chorus in particular were a big help in getting me to Vegas – and of course my Mum, who is my biggest supporter, was the mastermind behind the major fundraising event we held. Mums are the best! 

My most recent barbershop experience was doing a gig earlier this month with Molto! Quartet – the 2015 Sweet Adelines NZ champion quartet who also competed in Vegas! I was their replacement tenor as theirs is currently overseas. It was a great performance opportunity for me and good experience singing with different voices in a quartet! My own quartet ZEAL Quartet is competing for the first time at the NZ National Convention in 2016 in Wellington in May and also at the Under-25 Rising Star Quartet Contest in July in Auckland! Very exciting times – lots of hard work ahead!

Gig with Molto 7th Nov
Molto + me after our gig singing at a dinner function for the Women Judges of the High Court!

I know I say this every time but I will endeavour to actually do a blog post at least once a month from now on. So much stuff is going on in my life and it’s quite nice to be able to write it all down and fully appreciate the awesome things I get to be a part of! I’m going to make the most of this summer to be productive and get some exciting projects underway. More updates to come :)

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Jessie Xx

 

 

I need your help!

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Hey all!

Been a while since I’ve been active on my website/facebook page! Many exciting things have been happening in my life. For one thing – I now study a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Music conjoint majoring in French and Music Composition respectively. It’s pretty full on but I love it. I’m nearly halfway through my third year of university now, and have two years to go after this one.

Buuuut the big news at the moment is…. I’m going to Las Vegas in October to attend and compete at the International Sweet Adelines Convention with the Greater Auckland Chorus! GAC are the 2014 NZ Women’s Barbershop Chorus Champions and we recently sung at the Aotea Centre in May in preparation for competing in America on the international stage. This is a huge deal for me – barbershop has been a big part of my life for a long time and I’m very excited to take it further and keep pursuing these new opportunities.DanChilds_1505020770

The trip to Las Vegas has been budgeted at $4000 minimum, and unfortunately I don’t have access to that amount of money, so some major fundraising activities are being put into action! I have applied for and received a $1000 grant from the University of Auckland from the Vice Chancellors Arts Support Fund so this is a fantastic contribution which I’m really thankful for!

The Nelson Bays Harmony Chorus – my ‘mother’ chorus who I was a part of from age 13 to 19 – are very kindly organising and hosting a fundraiser evening in Nelson on July 7th at The Boathouse called ‘Las Vegas Cafe’. I’ll be doing some solo performing there along with some other special guests. We’re hoping to get as many people there as possible – there’ll be dinner and dessert provided! A great evening for friends and family to catch up, have good food and be entertained. Here’s the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/360914837415387/.

Huge thank you to NBHC for all their support!

In addition to the evening event we have a fundraiser Give a Little page for people who would like to donate in this way: . Every dollar is SO much appreciated and helps me on my journey to the international stage!

I hope you’re all doing well – thanks so much for sticking around and reading about what’s been happening in my life at the moment!

You’ll hear from me again soon I hope :)

Jessie x

 

On the radio TWICE in a week!

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Hey everyone!

First of all, if you haven’t heard my new song ‘Vows’ please head over and have a listen here!

It was super fun to make, very hard work and took about 3 or 4 ENTIRE days to finish. It’s the first song I’ve ever fully done on Ableton so it was a learning curve but hey gotta start somewhere.

So the first exciting radio-related event happened on the 25th March, when I got a txt from a friend saying that one of my songs was playing on KIWI FM! I was pretty stoked and managed to tune in and hear the end of it – it was my song Divine from the 2012 Play it Strange Songwriting Competition CD. So that was pretty awesome!

Then just last Friday (3 days later), I was woken up by a call at 7:30am saying I was on the shortlist for the ‘Sowing the Seeds of Success’ contest and I may or may not be rung by Mike Hosking within the hour. I had applied for this the week before, just coz you know you have to do these things just on the off chance, and written a huge page long, essentially like, biography of my life relating to music. And then I listed all the musical gear and equipment that I had bought to ‘support my career’, and I listed the few items I could think of at the time that I was really really wanting to get to help me record better music. These being fancy studio headphones, a midi controller keyboard, Logic Pro and Ableton Live Suite (recording/production softwares).

So long story short, Mike called me, we talked for a bit on air, he played some of my a-capella song See You Again (!!) And then I won all the gear I’d asked for! Needless to say it took me quite a few hours to calm down and become a normal person again after this happened. The adrenaline was pumping big time. So a huge thank you to Newstalk ZB and ASB Bank! I’m just waiting on a call from the bank and then I can hopefully head out and get my gear! I’M SO VERY EXCITED!

You can listen to the interview below:

I can’t believe we’re already up to the 5th week of the semester – only a couple of weeks to go before I head home for mid-semester break. I’m so happy to be back at it though, fully immersed in the music world and spending lots of time with my amazing and talented friends in Auckland!

I will be keeping you updated with new songs, other exciting events that may occur, etc etc, throughout the year! We are off to a good start.

Oh yeah, SONG OF THE WEEK below. I am in love.

Peace and love,

Jessie x