The story behind "Photograph"

with my Greek Papou

This week I did an entry for Vibes Web3 week 10 with my song "Photograph". As mentioned in the original post it was the first song I ever wrote. I performed an acoustic piano version of the song at sunrise for my entry. Some of the comments invoked some curiosity as to the recorded version of this song.

So, I'd love to share a little more of the story behind the song and its impact on my music career.

I was classically trained from the age of 6 by the most beautiful polish teacher named Ewa. She had been persuaded by my brother Jack (who was learning with her at the time) to take me on as a student even though I was young. Initially she was reluctant as her students ranged from about the age of 10 but my brother Jack and my mom were very persistent.

Six months after learning piano with her, aged 6, she entered me into the Johannesburg National Eistedford and I won the Best performance in the Under 18 category. My mom knew that this was definitely something I should continue to pursue and keep working hard towards.

Skip a few years later, after hearing a violinst perform a Gaelic piece of music, I felt inspired to write something that could be a cross over from classical music into pop. Originally the piece was just piano and then I added lyrics later into the song. I dedicated it to my late grandfather who always used to look at photographs with me. He passed away when I was 11 years old but he played a very profound part in my early years, teaching me from a really young age about appreciating the beauty of life and my love for the ocean. He used to have a saying that we still say to this day: "Look around you, it will astound you".

As you can see from the photographs, I was blonde with curly hair and inherited the dutch pale skin from my dad's side, whereas he was a dark tanned Greek.

I was fortunate enough with the final recording to perform the piano on a beautiful grand piano at the SABC studios in South Africa. It was completely live, no MiDi like we use these days and the resonance on the piano was pretty spectacular.

The producer I worked on the album with convinced me to add a rock ending to the song, building it slowly and ending it off with a bang. At first I didn't feel it was right for the song but when we finished it off I couldn't have been happier with how it came out. What an honour to be a 16 year old girl at the time with a record this special.

This was the band that performed with me on my 16th birthday- Luis, Greg, Adele,Jon (My producer for the album), Andrew - and younger me

Thanks to HIVE I am able to share this precious memory.