Stella Anning Trio
Whether your passion is sport, visual arts, acting, writing, or music it can always be traced back to a single fleeting moment which sparked the flame. For Melbourne musician Stella Anning her moment is something which she initially thought was "embarrassing" or "daggy but now looking back it's something she proudly owns as it has led her down the path of creating her own group, the Stella Anning Trio.
Speaking to Pario ahead of the release of the Stella Anning Trio's debut EP, Stat, Stella recalled how her passion for music came to be.
"I've only mentioned this to a few people because it's super daggy... but when I was about 10 years old there was this show on Disney that had a group of high school kids that would play in a band. After watching that show I really wanted to play drums & told my mum, but she wouldn't let me play drums because they were too loud. So I had to pick something else & decided to pick up the guitar, which I really took to & from very early on I knew that was it for me."
Although Stella says the show was daggy she also pointed out that it was somewhat revolutionary for the time.
"What made this Disney show stand out was the fact that they had women playing instruments, it wasn’t just a bunch of dudes. When you watched Rage during the 90s there might have been female singers but you wouldn't see female instrumentalists as much... That show was simply the spark that lit the fire inside me & I now realise how cool it was to have representation for women on this daggy Disney show. If I hadn't seen that I might not have thought about music as an option for me, so now I really appreciate it a lot more."
With the fire burning Stella then went on to pursue music through formal studies at a specialist music high school herself before then attending Monash University, where she studied Jazz.
Although Stella has this formal jazz training the music coming out of the Stella Anning Trio has a "more groovy, blues roots background" according to Stella. When asked to describe Stat to Pario Stella said, "This EP is instrumental music from a guitar, bass & drums trio but I would also say it's pretty contemporary music within the groove, roots space. These songs are grooves which I think are quite accessible to people across a range of genres."
Creating Stat has been a long process for Stella, thanks in large part the events of the past few years. Firstly the pandemic lockdowns postponed when Stella and her bandmates could actually get into a studio to record, but also Stella found out she was pregnant around that time as well.
"We were supposed to get into the studio before March 2020 but obviously that didn’t happen, so that slowed me down quite a lot," recalled Stella. "Around that same time I found out that I was pregnant, so even though lockdown ended I had a baby at the end of 2020, so it made it a little hard to do anything until the end of 2021."
Over the course of that lockdown period like any artwork created during that time Stat did undergo some changes. For Stella there are 2 songs in particular which a glaring examples of this.
"One of the songs on the EP is called Killing Time & that is is definitely a lockdown tune," said Stella. "The other is called Growing So Fast, which is about my baby."
Given that Stat has taken just that little bit longer to get out into the world Stella is incredibly excited for the world to hear it. Something which she has had to work even harder to achieve as an independent artist who is taking charge of the entire release & promotion process personally.
"I've definitly gone through the ebb & flow of emotions that come with being an artist, especially an independent artist who is trying to do all of the admin & promotion yourself," explained Stella. "Whenever you release music you're putting yourself out there & it's hard to be heard in this industry because there is so much going on now. If you're not that well established as a big name you get overlooked, which definitely got me down. It was killing me putting in all this effort to promote the EP, which I absolutely love, but not hearing anything back. I'm super proud of this EP so now that a few emails are coming back I'm starting to feel really excited about the release."
Follow Stella's Creative Journey on Social Media @StellaAnningGuitar
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