Q&A with Maria Pellicano

As a child, I always sang. From the age of 10 years old, I started to learn to play the guitar at school and I played it for two years consistently. Every week we would have a weekly lesson and we would have the latest pop song and with the latest pop song I would learn Schramm chords and sing popular songs.  At the age of 11 years old, The first song I remember being able to play on guitar moving from one chord to the other without stopping and starting was I’d like to teach the world to sing by The New Seekers and I became a teacher all those years later.

After that, I started joining a local Catholic Church group Worked in a church band and that was the beginning of my regular weekly performances. I also played at school and did my first public performance at the age of 12 years old at a talent evening where I sang I’m leaving on a jet plane.

Then, by the age of 12 to 13 years old, we moved to a Pentecostal church where I became very involved in the music program and became the main singer and musician at my church and so there was regularly audiences of about 300 people that we perform at starting with the Italian church first And I did that for many years I saying and played Italian Music in the Italian penny coastal Church in Melbourne for a good 20 years and that’s where I improved my Italian and my family was Italian too so Italian Music is always been part of my repertoire songs .

I always took singing lessons while singing at church. I actually began singing lessons when I was 16 years old, and went on an incredible journey of finding the right technique for my voice and to this day, I still choose very carefully my singing teachers and I continue to improve and support my voice with great coaching.

The age of 27 years old 1998 I started a singing school in Melbourne and taught singing to 80 students a week. They would come and go from my house from little children from four years old to very older people in their 60s and 70s. I still have a singing school as well, as well as a coaching business and my focus is to give people both singers and public speakers anyone who has a message and they’d like to communicate to be confident and to be powerful with their voices so that they can be influential, congruent and free flowing with their expression.

For the age of 30 years old, I kind of started to migrate out of the church, only singing into being a performer for weddings and funerals and events, and I also sang it our regular restaurant regularly at our restaurant that we had, and I do jazz music and ballads, and even pop classical songs Both in Italian and English.

I always loved that song and even as a young child. When I was 15 or 16 years old I always wanted to be in an Italian Band outside of the church. My dad would not let me because I was only really allowed to see the church in the early days. My dad was very protective, and wanted to make sure that I was only doing spiritual music, which was a really good foundation to the power in the energy of my singing, so I chose that song because it has incredible dynamic force and feeling in it. The music is expressive and it’s about a yell or scream, a deep desire or loss, and to lose something. Love would be the most difficult thing in life and to lose it, and regret, it would be gut wrenching.  I know my voice could communicate that and I was being very careful I wouldn’t yell, but I needed to probably yell even more in the song and read express myself, but I’m hoping that the song is reflective of the emotion that is carried in the life of somebody who loses love to lose love would be to lose a party yourself to die and I have had that experience. My dad died and I know that when I saw my dad in the coffin, I just fell to my knees and I just screamed and I was watching myself do this and was incredible how my body just did a bit myself , while having a baby had a body just aches and screams and that’s what singing is like to me to be completely surrendered to and that’s what I tried to create in performing this song and recording it

Originally, I didn’t want to sing the song and I was battling with whether I should do it or not because having a spiritual background, I didn’t want to sing a song and throw my body into something that was about agony and pain and regret a a loss of a dream, a death of a passion so I use the song to describe the humanity because my messages are always about Hope and love and strength and yet this song was saying the different a different message. When I accepted that this also is part of life, and that I could tell the story of what that would be like, and I could feel it in my body at times, you know when we lose love, and that could be any love doesn’t have to be a romantic love. Loss of love is something that from time to time we all experience, we all experience the loss of belonging the rejection of the others or we might even experience the loss of a passion as we get older or the loss of our body energy so loss is always there and it’s part of human condition and so that’s what I saying I saying story of loss and regret when we wish we could’ve done something different even though we know we can’t.

My experience in the studio was wonderful. I enjoyed being in the studio. My engineer was very easy to work with. His name is Chris Gatz. I recorded it the first time a couple of hours then I let a couple of my teachers hear it made a few amendments went back and corrected and changed a few things and Chris was great to work with because we together made the changes we needed to make so we spent another couple hours so all in all about a four hour recording process, and a few conversations with different experts, that I trusted their opinion.

I connected all I truly believe my experience is singing, my deep desire of connecting with music and songs like Petera is about my passion and my expression my connection with myself. It’s about my feelings it’s about my intentions, and it’s about my authenticity and realness. In the journey, I help others do it in their own way, When I’m true with myself, and I balance my life with my desires, my playtime, then I can do the serious work and the focus work of listening and supporting others .  I’m also very structured, and I make sure I have a balance life of different activities to make sure I feel satisfied, and supported by being with myself, and connecting with what’s true with me, and my music is one of the ways to make sure that I have that connection with myself, and that I can bring it out through a song because a song is the highest level of expression, because it requires the highest amount of voice and passion and strength.

In the future, I am aiming to do more songs like this one. I’m currently working on Adele and I will do it in Italian, in English and working with my singing instructor from Portugal. I have weekly lessons just to make sure I have that accountability and I also have that mentoring, I’m also working towards creating sing-alongs and group, singing, and blending together, music, singing songs, and therapy, so I will be using singing for creating group, gatherings and sing-alongs so then through the power of the voice and songs, people can connect with their soul and let go of the mind and relax, and let the music carry them away.

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