Mara Sophie

This will be a wonderful day, a great day. A day to be yourself. Happiness is tangible in the track Great Day. But then again it’s no coincidence that the 30-year old Mara Sophie chose this particular track as the title for her second album. An album full of jazzy pop songs, with the accent on pop, including the first single: a rather autocratic cover of Aerosmith’ Pink. And what’s really remarkable is Mara Sophie’s sound: deep and jazzy.

Mara Sophie’s singing sounds so natural and relaxed, pure and flexible, that it’s easy to imagine that when she is singing in the shower, she sounds exactly the same as in Great Day. She has a voice to be proud of and it’s because of that voice she was admitted to the conservatory. She started at the classical department but found that jazz suited her much better so she switched to jazz at the Amsterdam Conservatory.

Obviously she knew she could sing and yet she experienced the years of classical training at the conservatory mainly as a struggle. “Everything I did there, was put under a magnifying glass. Why did you pick that song? Why did you interpreted it like that? What does it tell you about yourself? In music, intuition is very important and there it was not really stimulated. I knew that I had a nice voice but not what I wanted to do with it.” The switch to the jazz department was an enormous leap forward. “I experienced more autonomy than with classical singing, I felt more comfortable with jazz.” Mara Sophie could not have made a better choice, she graduated with honors.

Even before her graduation her debut album Splendidly Imperfect was released - recorded in-house – which got her an iTunes Jazz Charts number 1. Despite the success, her natural perfectionism and the things she experienced during her studies, continued to trouble her. “I still was not completely satisfied, I could only think of the things I could have done better

Then, one day, during a ride in the tramway, the moment came that Sophie afterwards marks as a turning point. “I still remember it very well. I looked outside and thought: I want to do things differently, this doesn’t make me happy. I have to
do what is right for me, separate from what others think, and to make my own choices.” This sounds quite simple but it was exactly this decision which made that day a great day. She decided to start eating healthy and to start working out. And to say “no” for a change. To say goodbye to certain friendships. And to write her own songs. She did it, all of it. So she spent the following winter in her little music room with a notepad and her piano. “I said goodbye to the past and from that moment on, I decided how I wanted to sound and for the first time I wrote my own songs. It was really scary but I persisted.”

The first song she wrote during a big snow storm. She was sitting in her music room, not knowing what to do, outside the snow flakes kept falling. “I stared at the snow and thought: this whole process is really about letting go. And then I wrote the song Let You Out. It looks like a love song but it really is about me. I had to let go.”

Internationally renowned bass player and producer Ruud Jacobs saw the performance of Mara Sophie on the television programme Business Class hosted by Harry Mens and was much impressed by her singing talent. He got in touch with her, one thing led to another and a recording deal was signed with Wedgeview Music.

With the release of the jazzy pop album Great Day, the new approach by Mara Sophie became a reality. Sophie, happy and proud of the result, is particularly thankful to her singing teacher Gé Titulaer: “he taught me to have confidence in myself and stimulated me to find my own sound. I was very happy when he heard this album and said: you’ve done it, Sophie!”

Even though Mara Sophie is still young, she has ample stage experience. She was the supporting act at a performance by jazz legend Rita Reys and did backing vocals with the great Dutch singer and member of the Voice of Holland jury, Angela Groothuizen. She also sang in the presence of her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of The Netherlands and Mr Pieter van Vollenhoven, in November 2010 and 2011 at the opening of the Peter Stuyvesant Ball in New York. In November 2012 she was the opening act for none other than Colin Blunstone (Alan Parsons Project and The Zombies).

In february 2013 her intrepetation of This House is Empty now reached a number 2 Position in the Itunes Jazz Charts.

In march 2013 she played on the Java Jazz Festival and became highlight of the day!

After Java Jazz Festival she became the brand endorser of an Indonesian cosmetic brand Caring Colours and with her band she toured six weeks in may and june 2013 in Indonesia.In July 2013 she got a record deal for South East Asia by a major label and now she is starting to record her third album.

This sounds all very adventurous. Mara Sophie feels so much stronger, more self assured, but, abov