About Me

ADRIANA VASQUES

PROFILE

Born in Milano to a southern Italian family, I grew up in Trieste, a small town surrounded by the sea and by the north eastern Italian border with ex-Yugoslavia; this cultural and geographic background has strongly influenced me in my love for mixed cultures.
My life as a professional musician has started very early and has therefore taken me through many different musical habitats and studies. My musical tastes are consequentially wide and naturally open to any interesting musical language and my compositions reflect this omnivorous tendency.

Acting

Experience

Presenting

Experience

Music

Experience

Vocal Skills

Instruments Played

Languages Spoken

Experience & Qualifications

General Experience

Bands
I have been working as a professional singer since I was 16, singing in many different bands and line-ups, mainly in the northern Italian scene. I have been working as a free lance singer since then, doing back-up and lead vocals for bands and for recording studios and consequentially achieving a very good experience as a live musician and session vocalist. I have performed in many funk, pop and jazz oriented bands before realizing my direction was towards investigating and performing the European jazz and Brazilian musical literature. In 2010, having just moved to the UK, I joined the Irish cult band The Commitments for a northern American and European tour as a back-up vocalist.
Theatre
As a composer: An Tan Tes/CTA-Gorizia
As a singer: Puppet Festival-Mediterranea/CTA-Gorizia
As an actress/composer/singer: Canto per Falluja/CSS-Udine
As an actress/pianist: La lungje cene di Nadal/CSS-Udine
Projects
With Namòs in a quintet line-up I released the album "Sestante" (Artesuono-2005) in which four compositions and arrangements are mine. I have just recorded a new album with my new quartet, this time both singing and playing the piano on twelve new songs, soon to be released.
Radio
I have been a radio speaker and producer for over twenty years, conducting and producing my own radio shows from the Slovenian National Radio Station and interviewing hundreds of musicians of all kinds. I have also presented “Isole che parlano”, a Festival organized in Sardinia by musician Paolo Angeli.
Tuition
I have started teaching piano and music theory when I was 20 and I have been working in private and public schools and for private pupils regularly for over a decade; I have discontinuously taught in the following years, preferring the workshop format to daily teaching. From 2003 I conducted an interactive exhibition on music and theatre promoted by the Regional Theatre Agency of Friuli Venezia-Giulia and consequently taught over the same material in workshops for schools all over the FV-G Region.
Event organizing
I have been organizing two festivals in Trieste, both focusing on the Italian and Central European contemporary scene (Lampi d’Estate – KNK).

Qualifications & Training

While attending the regular school courses (high school and partly university), I attended the Conservatory of Music in Trieste, achieving a classical piano degree (Triennio Superiore Sperimentale). I sang in the Conservatory Choir for many years and toured northern Italy and Europe with it. At the same time and in the same Conservatory I attended the jazz course and many workshops with musicians like Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone, Stefano Bollani and Klaus Gesing amongst others.

Other Information

Relevant Skills

Singer, pianist, composer, radio author, speaker and producer, teacher.