A Conversation with Gabriela Grabowski

2 June 2020

Gabriela Grabowski was born in Argentina. She is a singing teacher at The Shine School of Music, specializing in the Functional Voice Method (Rabine Method). She has more than 10 years of teaching experience in both Individual and Group Classes, for children, adolescents and adults. We chatted with her and asked her some questions about her interests in music and singing. Here is what she has to say!

What was the first thing that made you interested in music?
Music has always been with me, my parents were very young and the radio was always playing in my house.

Who inspired you to make music?
My earliest influences were 80s singers like Bonnie Tyler. In my teens grunge appeared and singers like Alanis Morrissette and then metal with singers like Anneke Van Giersbergen whose influence has stayed with me to this day. I have always been inspired by singers who compose their own music and are very personal like Bjork, Tori Amos, Eddie Vedder …

How would you describe the music you normally make?
As a performer create and enjoy various styles: Jazz, Tango, Rock. But when composing I am more into indie rock or gothic metal.

What is your creative process like?
I usually compose melodies that occur to me when I walk down the street (it happens very often) or when I am playing on the piano, I let myself get carried away by a sensation, an image, or perhaps a color, and then I add harmony and finally the lyrics . When I work with other musicians and the harmony is already composed because they already have one or several instruments, it is the same, I allow myself to be “inspired” by them and compose the melody and then finally the lyrics.

If you could choose to collaborate with any musician, who would it be?
Phew there are many but I think if I had to choose only one it would be Bjork.

If you could choose to open any musician’s show, whose would it be? With my Rock project: Radiohead. With my acoustic song project: Fiona Apple.

Do you sing in the shower? What songs?
I don’t sing much in the shower, but when I do I usually repeat a phrase that “floated” into my head (many times it’s a song that my students are working on) If I liked it, it gets stuck in my brain and I repeat it like a loop.

Of your concerts, which one have you enjoyed the most and why?

I really enjoy the stage in general, whatever the genre it is, as long as it sounds good to me (you are blessed if you have good sound technicians) But the ones that I enjoy the most are the concerts in which a beautiful silence is generated, the audience is “really listening ”and makes me feel very connected not only with what I am performing but also with them and with the musicians who are with me on stage. There is a concert that I did a few years ago touring singing tangos in the house of a town near Toulouse that fulfilled all that.

Where would you like to do a concert?
With my Jazz band at the Duc de Lombards in Paris (I owe it to myself)

What famous musicians do you admire?
Bjork, Fiona Apple, Anneke Van Giersbergen, Lisa Hannigan, Eddie Vedder, Amy Lee, Tom Yorke, Tori Amos, Sarah Vaughan, Bach (he’s more than famous haha), Arvo Pärt …

What has been the best advice you have been given?
“No one is going to knock on your door looking for a singer, it’s you who has to knock on doors …”

If you could change something in the industry, what would it be?
The music industry’s insistence on responding only to certain commercial “fashion of the moment” criteria and its “without money, you don’t exist”… but we are already entering the debate that we live in a world of capitalist consumption and the change should be cultural and blah blah …

How do you think the internet has impacted the music industry?
I grew up listening to cassettes and leaving cds in the bars where I wanted to play, putting together an international tour without a manager would not have been possible without the internet. In my case, the Internet generated bridges that crossed oceans, shortened distances. It allows many musicians to spread our music, thus reaching places that would otherwise be impossible.

What would you be doing right now if we weren’t in confinement?
Singing Jazz at a Festival !!

If you want, you can do singing lessons online with Gabriela. Don’t forget to follow her Instagram profile, where she shares her songs and musical inspirations.