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 .