Misley - Fashion for Women

Misley - Designed and Made in Spain

“With acting you put yourself into a role to tell a story. I like to work on that and to touch the people out there,” says our guest at Riveting Riffs Magazine, Julia Helbich, from Germany.

Acting represents just one of the many facets of Julia Helbich’s career and education, including, her television hosting in which she has established a noteworthy career, as an interviewer of top athletes, both American and European, she also has an MBA Global Management, an MBA in Business Administration, two bachelor’s degrees, one in political science and the other in the arts.

For now, her primary focus is on acting and continuing to interview others.

“It is a tough decision to go to a new road in your career, but that is what you have to do. You have to go a few more steps, to see where it (takes you) because if you don’t you will stay in the same place,” she says

Finding herself attracted to the arts is not an accident with Julia Helbich.

“It is definitely in the family. Let’s start with my parents. My dad, Wolfgang Helbich was a very famous conductor and my mom Ortrun Helbich sang in my father’s choir. That is how they met! Later on, my mom managed my dad, because he traveled all over the world conducting. He was an amazing conductor and musician. He was a typical musician and conductor who worked late at night. He also composed his own music.

At his funeral there were over 2,000 people from all over the world. He was so appreciated. It was very touching.

My dad was not such a good businessman and that is why my mom took over at one point. We had five kids though, so my mom still had to be a mom. She gave piano lessons and she opened up a music school. With five kids she studied culture and music management and got her master’s degree. My dad and my mom were an amazing team,” she recalls.

Continuing to talk about her early artistic endeavors, Julia Helbich says, “I started off with singing, I played the violin. I then started with theater.

I guess I always had it in me (to become an actress), but I was afraid and I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t want to do just an acting school. I also wanted to have the assurance that I was safe. I had that from my parents. I grew up in an artist’s family and my parents were always focused on us getting a great education.

I started off very quickly with great roles in Germany (appearing) in pretty big series and movies. That gave me the (confidence) that I do have talent.

One of those series is called Tatort and it is one of the biggest series in Germany. Everybody knows it. It is a little bit like Criminal Minds. I played in that (three times) and it was one of my first roles. One time I had a role when I played a bad agent and I liked that.

Other television and film appearances include, Lügen und andere Wahrheiten and she played a young mother in Haltet die Welt an. She has three films in various stages of production, Islamaphobia in post-production, Torquemada’s Curse and I Will…anything that moves, which is in pre-production. Julia Helbich played Henrietta in die Expats and Read More

Ana Muñozo - Costume Designer

Costume designer Ana Muñozo has designed for productions in theater and film, in both Barcelona, Spain and in New York City. She has lectured at Fordham University in the United States and UNED University in Spain. Although, she is a designer, you discover while in conversation with her that she is part costume designer, with a bit of director, a dash of screenwriter and with an affinity for actors and actresses.

Ana Muñozo studied fashion design and in fact spent four years at the beginning of her career in the industry and established a fashion brand with some colleagues.  

“On white fabric we hand painted the prints ourselves and we made a color chart for every season.

We designed accessories such as ties, fans, umbrellas, scarves and dresses. Actually, the original idea were nightshirts, I remember when I showed them to a client, she told me that she saw them as dresses and I said, "as long as you sell it, I don't care if they wear it to dinner or to dream." We did everything ourselves, the boxes, the labels, they were exclusive and on the label the client could see the number of the series. (There might be) a series of fifteen and you bought number four, therefore you knew that there were only fifteen of that model. We did fashion shows in different places like the international "fashion cafe" and we also participated in some collective exhibitions. I also worked at different times as a stylist for several publications,” she says.

Ana Muñozo grew up with her parents and one older sister in a rural area outside of Barcelona, before they moved into the city.

Her ties to both the fashion world and theater run several generations deep, “My mom was an excellent tailor. I grew up surrounded by buttons, fabrics and sewing.

My great-great grandfather and his siblings acted in his village since the theater companies did not go there. His brothers were the actors, and he was the promoter. This was the connection my family has with art and fashion,” Ana Muñozo explains.

She continues, recalling, “I spent most of my time drawing. I was drawing all day and then I decided to draw clothes for my dolls. My mother made dresses for my dolls, but she wanted to know what I had drawn. My mother made the dresses that she wanted, but I said mom! (you can hear the childlike inflection in her voice as she recalls)! She sewed what she wanted. They were beautiful but different than my (drawings).”

During her teenage years, “If I said to my mother for example, I want a jacket for this weekend, my mother would make it for me in a day. It was incredible.

I was influenced by the fashion of the moment, but I never wanted to have to wear my designs. This is weird. I think this is weird. I think in that moment I didn’t know what I Read More

Laura Blossom - Madrid's Finest

Actress and singer Laura Blossom, may be someone you have not heard of yet, but you soon will, because she is superbly talented in both of her career choices and although we have not yet had a chance to watch her dance, we understand that she is also an accomplished dancer. If we were casting a musical, whether on stage or in film, we would have her in our cell phone as someone to present to the producers and directors.

Laura Blossom is what many would consider to be a late bloomer when it comes to acting.

“I started acting when I was twenty years old. My uncle, Balbino Lacosta, is an actor in Madrid and I often went to the theater to see him. He was the only (person in the arts) in my family. My grandmother and my mother played piano, but as a hobby,” says Laura Blossom.  

She explains another factor that led to her pursuing a career in the arts, “There was an acting course at the university where I was studying art history and I thought why not and I loved the course.”

Laura Blossom grew up in Zaragoza, the capital of the autonomous region of Aragon located in northeast Spain. The city is located between Madrid and Barcelona.

“It is a big city, but not as big as Madrid. There are theaters there, but I had to move to Madrid, because in Zaragoza you can’t live from art and from acting, because there aren’t enough opportunities,” she explains.

She says, “I started to sing when I was five years old and at the same time my parents paid for me to take piano lessons. I loved that. I then took a music course and it was the best experience of my life. I was in music courses for eleven years.

When I was ten years old, I started studying ballet in a school near my home. I studied for twelve years and then I broke my leg when I was practicing. Two or three years later I was watching musical theater dancing and I thought it was so beautiful, so I decided to learn.

I was eleven years old when I first performed for an audience. For the music course I was in we played a concert and we sang. It was really fun and I liked that. It was in the principal auditorium. There were a lot of people,  Read More

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Sayonara Sorrow - Ben Brown

Singer, songwriter and musician Ben Brown from Austin, Texas sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine recently to talk about his new album Sayonara Sorrow a collection of songs whose music is as beautiful as the lyrics are poignant. A common thread throughout these songs is social commentary, which should not be mistaken for being political, because that it is not. Commenting on social issues through music is a familiar theme For Ben Brown as the Pennsylvania born songwriter and his brother Jeff, who tragically passed away a few days after this interview, recorded the song “That’s How the West was Lost,” with their band The Savage Poor.

He says, “The song, “What Will Happen to All that Beauty,” was inspired by novelist and activist James Baldwin. James Baldwin was a writer and activist in the sixties and seventies. I was reading some of his writings a few years ago and the line “What Will Happen to All that Beauty?” is a direct quote from one of his essays called The Fire Next Time. At the end of his essay, he talks about what will happen to the beauty that is blackness. He equates beauty with blackness. He says what will happen to the beauty of blackness, in the United States if we don’t reconcile the racial injustices. He said this in 1968. When I read that line it sounded profound and like a great title. Shortly thereafter I heard music in my head that seemed to fit the mood and the tone, so it went from there. I made a YouTube video with a quote from James Baldwin and some stock footage of 1960s civil rights activism.”

Ben Brown takes the lead vocals on the song, “What Will Happen to All that Beauty,” while producer Mick Flowers lays down the drumbeats, Jeff Brown plays bass and Tim Cappello’s (Tina Turner, The Lost Boys) vehement saxophone graces this song and others on this fabulous album. Ben Brown also plays guitars and keyboards.

As for the former song we mentioned, Ben Brown says, “The song “That’s How the West Was Lost,” is from The Savage Poor album The Grown Ups.

Social Justice and Social Justice commentary has been an issue and concern in my writing and was in the writing of my brother Jeff Brown years. In The Savage Poor I would argue that the writing takes a slightly more ironic tone. In the solo work of Sayonara Sorrow it is a bit more direct and a bit more personal. Social commentary and social justice was fodder for the work that we did for a number of years. Read More