Featured - 09 | April | 2021
Born in San Antonio, Texas; Raised in France and currently based out of Austin Texas. Victoria played classical piano from the young age of 6, growing up in France.
At 13, Victoria moved back to Texas with her family and decided to pick up the guitar and immediately started writing songs. She started playing open mics in the San Antonio area when she was noticed by producer Gordon Raphael (The Strokes, Regina Spektor) who then recorded her first seven songs acoustically.
In search of a bigger sound, Victoria recorded her first full-length album with producer Jacob Sciba (Nelo) at Pedernales Studio in Spicewood, Texas. The album includes her original song “In the World” which charted #40 on the iTunes Charts in 2011.
Victoria then made an EP with Hollywood-based producer Jeff Blue and Engineer Mike Gonsolin which includes alternate version of “In the World”, named “It Only Gets Better”.
At 16 Victoria returned to San Antonio to record a full-length album with San Antonio
based Tejano/Conjunto producer Severo Contreras and acclaimed blind musician
Juanito Castillo. The album was named “Back Home in San Antone” which
included a cover of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy”. Juanito played Guitar, Piano,
Accordion and Drums on the whole album. She then had the album Pre-Release
Show at the old Cadillac Bar downtown San Antonio at which Action Magazine
owner Sam Kindrick attended and made her the cover of the following month’s
issue. The Official “Back Home in San Antone” release show happened at
Sam’s Burger Joint Music Hall, venue capacity of 600 of which she
sold out. The show was played with all the musicians that were
on the record which included Ron Knuth (fiddle player for
George Strait) and Randy Reinhard on steel guitar.
That same year Victoria returned to Hollywood to record with
Mike Gonsolin again and his then business partner Nick Nittoli.
They made three songs together “Alive”, “Good Heart to Hide”
and “Let Go” all of which can be found on Celestine’s “The Wasted
Tears EP”.
At 17, Victoria recorded with then Florida based producer Blake Harnage
(PVRIS, Versa) and his business partner/former band member Sierra
Kusterbeck. They recorded “Wasted Tears”, “As We Grow Old” and “Something
More” which are all songs that are included in the Wasted Tears EP.
A couple of years later, Victoria made a full-length record with Normandy,
France-based producer James Sanger (Keane, Dido) which include singles
“Carrying On” and “Can You Hear the Echo?”. The album is called “The Echo” and
was released November 2019. The release party took place at Cosmic Coffee in
Austin, TX, featuring a lineup of Greg Den (formerly of Cosmico)and a solo
performance of Matthew Gilmour.“Can you hear the Echo?” charted in the British
MusicWeek charts.
Victoria graduated with a degree of audio engineering from The Recording
Conservatory of Austin.
www.victoriacelestine.com