![]() |
Carrera Couture - Fashion ![]() website |
More Interviews (Click on the section links below)
Jazz Rock Americana / Roots / Country POP / AC / Crossover R&B / Soul Film & Theater Fashion / Art / Literary About Us Contact Us
Sara Deray - Actress - Madrid
Those are the words of actress Sara Deray of Spain and she has had to
imagine a lot of things during her career, as she has played a nun (El
Sorbono del Cielo), an inmate in jail, a scientist who was the
mother to a cloned daughter (Órbita 9), she incredibly funny
as Mary Ann, in the television
series Yo Soy Franky (I Am Franky) for Nickelodeon (2016 –
Colombia), and she just finished her fourth season of the comedy series
El Pueblo, a Spanish Amazon Prime production, in which she plays
Maria Luisa.
Sara Deray’s ability to portray a broad spectrum of characters is due to
a combination of her skills as an actress and her culturally diverse
background.
She explains, “My grandma was born in France. That was my mother’s
mother. She went to the United States when she was quite young and she
decided to become a U.S. citizen. She left her French nationality behind
and married an American guy. That was after she had my mom and she
became divorced from my grandfather. She then married the American guy.
My grandma married three times. The first time she married the father of
my mother who was a French guy and she got divorced when my mother was
fourteen. When my grandmother moved to the United States that is when
she got married the second time and then the American guy died. She then
married one of his best friends, because he had also lost his wife.”
You are thinking, well that is a bit diversified, but nothing that says
hey, look at this. Just wait! She continues, “I traveled a lot. I did
not grow up in Alicante (Spain). I grew up in Nigeria (she laughs). My
father was an engineer in the oil (industry), so he traveled for several
companies and sometimes there were American, Canadian, British or
Belgian companies.
|
Florence Dore
After spending an hour and one-half in conversation with Florence you
come away with deep respect for her insightfulness, smile at her quick
wit and due to her warmth and generosity you come away ninety minutes
later convinced that you must have been friends in another life.
We decided to begin with digging into the roots for her passions for
literature, writing and music. Where did this all begin?
She thoughtfully says, “I think it was the music. I would say the two
things are similar parts of me. It is my love of literary beauty related
to whatever that kernel of joy is when you are really small and your
enjoyment of music and your response to beauty that maybe is irrational
beauty and artistic beauty. I think they are similar.
In terms of the chronology of my life, music happened first, I grew up
in Nashville and I was around music all of the time. My uncle was a
guitar player, but (nobody else) in my family really was musical). We
ended up singing Johnny Cash (songs) when I was small. I made up songs
all of the time when I was really small, before I even (played) the
guitar.
We had these roller skates that had metal wheels with ball bearings in
them. I remember with my siblings skating around in this office building
parking lot and making up songs to the rhythm of the whirr,” We share
some
|
Misley - Fashion for Women
Misley - Designed and Made in Spain
|
The Claudettes Going Out!
The album was recorded in Chicago over what Johnny Iguana describes as,
“sprawling events.”
Continuing he says, “Half of the record was recorded in piecemeal during
the lockdown era. I had my engineer (Grammy Award nominated) Anthony
Gravino come over and record my piano to a click track and got good
takes that we liked. Then we had Berit do the vocals. We had Mike and
Zac practice in my basement. They were songs that we had mostly played
live, so it wasn’t like they were being introduced to new material.
Fortunately for me when COVID arrived I had been on a big writing streak
and the majority were songs that we had started playing live. It was (a
matter of) tightening up and making some choices for the studio. Then we
went into the studio and they recorded it and we did overdubs.
Generally, it involved only a couple of people in the studio at a time
and with masks. That was in 2020 and into 2021. Then in 2021 we felt we
could get into a space together and record. That led me to believe that
the songs from both recording periods wouldn’t play well together on
something you might call an album, because
|
Luke Leblanc - New Album
The very likeable artist said, “The whole time we were recording it, it
felt like everything melded together perfectly. It is a nice group of
songs. Erik Koskinen was the producer and I was very fortunate to be
able to surround myself with some good musicians too. It all just
clicked together very nicely.”
The title of the album has us stumped Luke.
“It is used a lot in psychology and one of the definitions is a
temporary defense against extreme stress. The person might lose
awareness of their identity and the awareness of where they are. I took
that term and as I have observed, and I think a lot of other people have
observed, as a collective society I think we are going through a fugue
state a little bit. In terms of a cultural and political divide (Many)
responses to generations of inequity and the pandemic are leading people
to take a step back. That is why I have the lines in the song, “Take
your mind off of it / I think we’re living in a fugue state.” Someone
told me the other day that a fugue is also a Classical music term. I
don’t know a ton about it, but it is like a chaotic sound. I think the
musical term came first,” he says.
Let us take a step back. His first name Luke is after Old Luke in the
song “The Weight,” by The Band and his middle name is Young, because his
mom was a big fan of Neil Young, with whom he shares the same birthday. |
A Fragile Tomorrow
We opened our conversation with Sean by asking him to describe the
typical fan of A Fragile Tomorrow.
“We have opened for so many different kinds of bands and we have done so
many different things, that I think there are people who like some
things that we do, but don’t like other things that we do. That is
totally fine. There are people who come to listen to us play and who buy
our stuff, but they are also people who listen to a million different
things.
That is a hard question, because I definitely don’t think there is a
typical fan. One thing that is really cool is we have grown to (the
point) that we also have fans whose music we have grown up listening to
and who we have looked up to. They are also people we have toured with.
We have in some ways become a musician’s band. I prefer that in one way,
because I am a music nerd. There is something (about our music) that
resonates with people who also have musical backgrounds. There is not a
typical fan.
When we were kids, people came to see us, because we were kids. I was
thirteen years old and in Brendan’s (his brother) case he was eleven. We
were playing Jimi Hendrix covers and we were teenagers playing
|
Sierra Rein - Actress / Singer
Sierra Rein (pronounced Rhine as in rhinestones) talks about her role in
the Hulu series Fleishman is in Trouble, “It came out of the blue. It
was January of this year and my agent who hadn’t really talked to me for
a while said hey can you put yourself on tape for this TV show? I didn’t
really know much about the project, so I did a tiny bit of Googling. I
was like oh, okay there is this character Cherry who is in the book
Fleishman is in Trouble, but there wasn’t very much about her. I had my
husband do the other dialogue and I shot the scene and sent it in. This
was when we were in lockdown a little bit (New York City). We were
slowing emerging and putting our toes back into the river of humanity of
this year.
In mid-February I got an email that said, you are booked. I called my
husband and I said you know that one minute scene that you shot with me,
I am going to do a scene with Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg. It was
one of those surreal moments.
I was surprised they didn’t have a callback. I think it was one
of those (times) when they see who the person is and think yep that’s
the character. That’s great, because
|
Diane Marino - I Hear Music
“I started (this
album) not long after COVID was in lockdown. I have lost track of the
years. What was that 2020 or something? A lot of people took advantage
of that time and there was a lot of creativity going on. That is
probably what happened here too,” recalls Diane Marino. Continuing she
says, “I was researching the songs and looking for the next project,
before COVID even hit and we said what are we going to do now. It forces
you to spend more time focusing on what you want to do. You weren’t
going anyplace. You weren’t working. You weren’t doing anything.
|
The Law According to Lidia Poët
The series is
directed by Letizia Lamartire and Matteo Rovere. There were five
screenwriters for the series, so we are not going to name them all. The Law
According to Lidia Poët is one of a few period pieces that
immediately come to mind in which the leading characters are women, who
live in a time when women were continually denied equal rights to
|
Akash Sherman - Film Interview
As much as the entertainment industry is filled with stories of
successful performing artists who grew up in places like Los Angeles,
New York City and Nashville, there are an equal number of fabulous
stories of artists who grew up in obscure places, not obscure, because
they were unimportant, but more because one does not think of those
towns, cities and villages, as an incubator for creatives. Edmonton,
Alberta, Canada is one of those cities and this writer says that with
warmth and sincerity, as it is still the city considered to be my
hometown, even though I was born in Toronto.
Akash Sherman, whose father and sister are both doctors and whose mother
is a pharmacist, one might have assumed would have been headed for more
of an academic career, in a cold, northern city, far removed from
Canada’s two Hollywood North cities, Vancouver and Toronto and where
minus thirty and minus forty degrees Celsius temperatures keep most
people indoors, unless you ski or
|
Actress Chelsea Clark
Last month (September 2022), she presented a reading of Joseph
Krawczyk’s The Last of the Freudians directed by Eddie Lew in New
York City.
Chelsea Clark elaborates, “I have worked with Joseph Krawczyk before. He
is a brilliant playwright and I love his work. This one is about a
college professor who for some reason can commune with the dead spirit
of Sigmund Freud. I think it is brilliant. The way it is done in the
play is he can hear Sigmund Freud, but nobody else can. I play one of
the professor’s graduate students and (my character) is still having an
affair with this professor. It is not the typical play that I am in, but
I love Joe’s work, so I am excited to be in this reading.”
As for her preparation for The Last of the Freudians, she says,
“I work from the outside in if it is a character I do not understand
emotionally. I work a lot with physicality. How does this person walk?
How does this person speak? What is the tone of their voice? Is their
voice different than mine? That will inform how to play this person if
it is not something that does not come naturally to me. This person is a
|
Misley - Fashion for Women
Misley - Designed and Made in Spain |
Beatrix Löw-Beer
Artists such as
Beatrix Löw-Beer
are the reason why people are discovering the saxophone for the first
time. When you watch her concert performances or videos to promotional
videos everything from her movement to her attitude and her costumes
exhibits an exuberance for performing music. One is never left with the
impression that you are watching someone playing an instrument, because
her saxophone becomes an extension of her persona.
Take us back to where this all began.
I grew up in Augsburg, which is one hour from Munich, which is the
capital of Bavaria. It is in the south of Germany, very close to
Austria. Augsburg is the third largest city in Bavaria and I think it
has 300,000 residents. There are two rivers in my city, the Lech and
Wertach, (which flow into the Singold River) and there are also small
lakes.
I have one sister and one brother, and I am the youngest child. Our
family came from the Czech Republic and most of them left for other
continents. My mother was an Opera singer and everyone was into music
and played an instrument,” she says.
We had read that
Beatrix Löw-Beer
began to play the violin when she was three years of age and we tried to
get our heads wrapped around the image of a little child playing an
instrument of that size.
Laughing good naturedly, she says, “No they were very small violins, it
was 1 / 16th of the dimension of the large one.
My sister is a violinist and she is one year older. The only thing I
really remember is since she wanted to start (playing) and I also wanted
to start. It was a competition. I just always wanted to be better.”
“In Germany I attended a music high school and it is only for people who
play their instruments well. You can do your (academic) degrees there,
but you can also start early on your Bachelor’s music degree. The focus
is on music, but I also had other major subjects. I had a professor from
the music conservatory. It was really cool, because I could
|
Laura Benitez and the Heartache
Laura Benitez sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine recently to talk
about her new album California Centuries by Laura Benitez and the
Heartache. Depending on where you are on the ideology spectrum you may
find yourself cheering this album on or in various degrees of
disagreement with the lyrics and tone, but the one thing you should all
agree on is these are well crafted songs, played and sung superbly. Full
disclosure by this writer that he is firmly encamped in the section
cheering this album on.
The opening song “Bad Things,” sets the tone for the album, each verse
its own story drawn from real life.
“The first verse was inspired by my partner Brian’s family, his mom,
sister and stepdad all lived in Paradise California and they lost
everything in the wildfire. His sister was driving to escape the flames
and she got caught in a traffic jam and she had to just run. The first
verse is a true story about his sister running for her life. You don’t
think that is something that will happen in your family.
The second verse I wrote a week before lockdown (because of COVID) when
it just seemed like people were hoarding toilet paper and things were
getting crazy. I was thinking about that fear and what it is like to be
in a pandemic.
The third verse is about refugees. I didn’t think I would know people
who would lose everything in a wildfire. I didn’t think I would live in
a pandemic. I also didn’t think I would live under a regime when I would
consider leaving my country. We were living in that. The people in Syria
didn’t think they would have to leave their country and the people in
Guatemala didn’t think they would have to leave Guatemala.
Nobody thinks it is going to happen to them, but sometimes it does. The
last two verses are me saying what would it be like and what would it
take for that to happen to me? When I imagined it, it was almost
predictive of January 6. The last verse is about refugees, but it is
about me as a refugee imagined,” explains Laura Benitez.
Bob Spector serves up a delicious guitar solo on “Bad Things,” and Dave
Zirbel is equally splendid on steel guitar.
|
Ariana Donovan Making A Difference
“Modeling was never actually an interest of mine. It was just something
that popped up for me. I grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan and there is
not a whole lot to do here. Modeling and fashion is one of the ways I
kept myself entertained for six years now. Originally, when I got into modeling I had been falsely scouted online by a predator, who used to be an agent for a really big agency in New York. My mom called their office and they let us know about it (that he was a predator), so I applied to a local agency and I was accepted. I think I was a little naïve about (the stalker), but after my mom called the office, it made more sense. I was gullible and I didn’t pay attention,” she says. Remember this experience, because it starts to inform the decisions she makes later.
Continuing Arian Donovan says, “I started to develop self-confidence,
but then I received this offer and even though it wasn’t true I still
wanted to pursue modeling, because now the interest was there. Also,
when I was a kid, I was really into dressing up. I would wear my dresses
and plastic heels that you can wear around the house. Whenever my
grandmother would pull out one of those disposable cameras that could be
purchased at Shopper’s Drug Mart, I would stop crying and pose. It was
an interest, but not one that I was conscious of until I received the
fake offer. I was sixteen when that happened.”
“I can’t name them, but the first agency scammed me. I was forced to pay
seven hundred dollars for a photoshoot, just to see if they would sign
me. Everything I did with them afterwards I had to pay a lot of money to
do work for them and to be promoted. I found out later on that is sort
of a normal thing, not the test shoot part, but the agency signing fee
and it is never as expensive as (I paid). You have to do that every
time. They were investigated and found to be scamming (others) and by
that time I had already moved to Vancouver and I had signed with a
different agency there. Most of the work that I did with the first
agency was trade for print with photographers here.
Modeling was never actually an interest of mine. It was just something
|
|
Un Asunto Privado (A Private Affair)
Un Asunto Privado,
which if you live in an English first speaking country you will find on
Amazon Prime, as A Private Affair, can best be described as a
Mystery Dramedy. Set in the late 1940s or early 1950s in Spain, firmly
entrenched in both the Franco dictatorship and a time when women had few
rights in Spain and for that matter elsewhere in the world, the
storyline is built around Marina Quiroga and her sidekick Héctor, as
they seek to find out who the serial killer is. There is some limited
violence in this series due to the nature of the crime and although it
is not gratuitous, it is probably not best for children. Jean Reno who
has for decades blessed us with his magnificent performances, at the age
of 74 demonstrates that he has not lost a step in terms of his brilliant
acting. Aura Garrido who has starred in El Ministerio del Tiempo,
Blue & Malone: Casos Imposibles and El inocente (The
Innocent), blossoms in both a comedic and dramatic role as Marina
Quiroga. We are wishing for a sequel to this series if for no other
reason than to enjoy another spectacular performance from her.
Will Pablo Zarco (played by Gorka Otxoa) win Marina’s heart or will it
be Andrés Castaño (actor Álex Garcia) or will one of them be discovered
as the killer? Marina flirts
with both, batting her eyelashes and looking deep into their eyes,
before handcuffing one to a chair and knocking the other one out cold.
Otxoa is funny and quite handsome, while Garcia’s character, Castaño,
rumor has it may be a womanizer.
Why is it that Marina’s brother Arturo (Pablo Molinero), the current
commissioner of police does not want Marina poking around, unofficially
in this crime, trying to solve it? Does he merely reflect the male
chauvinism of the times, is it jealousy alluded to in flashbacks to when
they were children or is it something else altogether?
|
All written material, all photographs and all designs are protected by copyright © and patents by the writers, photographers, editors, designers, musicians, songwriters musicians and filmmakers who contribute to Riveting Riffs Magazine. None of the material contained in this magazine may be redistributed, posted on any website or transferred through any electronic means without the written consent of Riveting Riffs Magazine. Any attempt to profit from the material in Riveting Riffs Magazine will be prosecuted, as will the infringement of copyright. All Rights are reserved. |