Leandra - Calling Spirits With Her Piano

I happily stumbled upon Leandra's cover version of Radiohead's "Creep,"and several clicks later found myself a fan.  Leandra is an incredibly talented musician hailing from Belarus.  She is classically trained and appears to have a very diverse interest in many styles of music.  She also perfoms as Ophelia Dax in the metal band Jesus on Extasy.  Read more after the jump.


I think this excerpt from the press release for her solo album "Metamorphine" gives a nice feel for who Leandra is - or at least who I'd like her to be:

An old piano with ivory keys.  A little girl who unperturbedly plays melodies with tender fingers.  At the age of three, they are those of her environment, the sounds of her Russian childhood.  When her ambitious piano lessons start at the age of six, she begins to hear more and more of her own melodies in her head.  They demand to be let out.  Encouraged and coached as an exceptionally gifted child, the little girl with the shy eyes wins one competition after another in Belarus; a junior scholorship at the Academy of Music follows when she is nine.   Her success at music competitions continues in Germany.  But they don't seem to satisfy her hunger for the sounds in her own soul.  Her big eyes are still shy, despite her music courses at the academy.  Her place at the piano is her fate, her fulfillment, the place of her metamorphosis.  At the keyboard of her piano, she feels powerful and powerless at the same time:  Leandra.


"To me, the piano is an escape from the outside world, a type of communication that starts where others stop," says the passionate artist, who speaks five languages.  There is no communication barrier in her life.  She loves tearing down borders, musically and in terms of language, caressing at the same time unsettling her audience with the call of her blood, which she turns into sounds and words.  Having made a name for herself on the scene as the erotic keyboard predator, Ophelia Dax of Jesus On Extasy, the beautiful thoroughbred musician is now getting ready to seduce our ears with her solo project.  In contrast to Ophelia, Leandra is that person in her who marvels at the world all by herself.  Unabashedly avant-garde on the one hand and sensously earthed on the other, Leandra devotedly sets about transforming her musical heartbeat.  "Metamorphine" is a sonic document of her fragile striving for change and challenge.  Accompanied by her six cats, Leandra refuses to surrender to everyday life, to a stagnation of the productivity of her own imagination.  Hearing the wooden floor creak under her bare feet, breathing in loneliness and calling the spirits with her piano - that's what makes her happy.

Leandra's Website

Leandra on MySpace

Jesus on Extasy on MySpace

I really like this video for "Coloured" an original song from Leandra's album "Metamorphine" - quite frankly most washed out and distressed videos featuring spooky dolls work for me - In this case there happens to be a great performer behind the imagery as well.




And the great cover of Radiohead's "Creep":

Leandra on Amazon