I was curious as to what made her decide to study music in the US. She shared,“ When I was young, in my early teens, I had developed an affinity for film music. It was very obvious that I wanted to do that, and my father found this ad of Berkeley College of Music on the billboard, and he told me, " You should go there and we ' ll support you." And they did, and I went to Berkeley to study film music. During Berkeley, I wanted to perform, but it was hard to perform as a pianist because I was a classical, and at Berkeley if you don ' t have like jazz skills, it ' s hard to move around. At some point I brought back an accordion of my grandmother ' s, and people were very excited about the sound because there was no other accordionist. I mean, I wasn ' t an accordionist. I still am not an accordionist, I just fake it really well.”
A brief listen to her accordion playing and any listener will immediately disagree. It’ s not a surprise about her interest in film music. It’ s apparent when listening to her songs that they could easily transplant you to some other place or to some setting in a film, somewhere. In fact, some of her music has already been featured, including a notable episode of the hit show“ Louis” by Louis CK.
The talented singer from Greece usually sings in French. The texture of her voice over this beautiful language is one of the most captivating things about her music. It’ s an infectious sound that you have to hear to truly grasp … and then get lost with. However, this prompted the question-- if it is a musical decision to sing in French? According to Magda,“ I didn ' t really think about it. It just turned out like that. At the time when I started writing songs, I was living with somebody and he was Belgian. I tried to learn French so I can speak in his native tongue. But now in the new album for example, there ' s a song in Portuguese, there are two Greek songs, one Spanish song, four songs in French. In the future, I ' d like to make it even broader I think.”
Magda shared that she has synesthesia, an unusual gift where sounds are visualized in some way:“ I see whatever I listen to. I see it written down with the specific colors. You ' re talking now and I see written down. I see written down, written down. I see the words and they have specific colors. It ' s almost like the stock market thing. But, colorful. But, everything has an image. It has been a benefit, but it also has been a hindrance at times because in order for me to memorize something, I have to memorize its color pattern. So, sometimes it ' s hard for me to learn or internalize something because I have to spend time developing a color pattern for it. For example, if you have, like, a piano voicing and you invert it, the version of a piano voicing is going to have a different color. Musicians, engineers … I freak them out sometimes because I have a very good memory of sound. Like, if something is changed a little bit in the mix, I can tell because the color changes.”
An intriguing artist, even more fascinating to know this dynamic aspect of her. And it clearly influences the music which is already so full of color. It would seem that the music we enjoy is a glimpse into the world as Magda sees it.