When choosing the songs to comprise her debut EP, Home, Miranda Di Perno settled on five of her originals, some New And Some Old, Believing Them To Offer A Cohesive Snapshot In Time.
According to the singersongwriter, the tracks tell a similar story of the journey she's taken over the last five years, moving from West Vancouver to Montreal and now her current base of New York City.
"'Home' was the first part of the journey," she says, reached Tuesday from her Chelsea apartment. "I wrote that when I was 17 when I was moving from Vancouver to Montreal. I chose that one as the title track because it's always been one that resonates with me and with every new step evolves to fit exactly how I still feel. For me, it's so much about family and love and my mom. And, not saying goodbye, but taking a step away for a while."
Born in Montreal, Di Perno, 22, and her family moved to the West Coast when she was nine. It was while a student at Sentinel secondary that her musical future came into focus.
"I was always a creative person," she says. "I always loved music and would write down all the lyrics to songs when I was little. ... In Grade 7 I started taking voice lessons and then when I got to Sentinel, they do the R&B band, which is all classic soul music, and that's where I found the kind of sound that I was really interested in. From there I grew my love for soul and R&B and then hip hop."
It was also while in high school that Di Perno caught the songwriting bug, inspired by her peers after attending a youth summer program at Boston's Berklee College of Music.
Following graduation, Di Perno moved to Montreal to study piano and voice at Concordia University for three years with jazz as her focus. Two years ago she transferred to the City College of New York to complete a jazz performance program and she's currently a semester away from graduation.
"You think of New York as the definitive place as to whether or not you have what it takes to make something of yourself and I wanted to see if I did," says Di Perno.
NYC and its vibrant music community has had a major impact on her career.
"There's been no greater inspiration than being surrounded by and constantly going to shows where you're seeing people your age, and relative ability to your own, and doing exactly what you want to do. There's nothing I find that lights a fire under your ass more than that," she says.
New EP Home, from concept to release, took place over a whirlwind six months.
It was made possible thanks to a successful Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaign conducted earlier this year, and was recorded at Brooklyn's The Rumpus Room. The record was produced by Barb Morrison (Blondie, Rufus Wainwright), whom Di Perno met at the Gender Amplified Music Festival, presented at Barnard College last fall.
Joining her on the record are a host of musicians she's met since moving to New York.
"I'm lucky to be in a place where there's a lot of opportunities around if you're determined enough to not just go after them, but keep going, because you're probably not going to get it the first few goarounds," she says.
Di Perno released the record in March at a show at New York's Rockwood Music Hall. She's currently working on putting together a summer tour and hopes to play the West Coast sooner rather than later.
To listen to Home, visit mirandadiperno.bandcamp. com or download her music on iTunes.
