entertainment // 65
Amory Sivertson
A singer/songwriter/Emersonian on the road to stardom by Chrisanne Grise // photo by Zac WOlf
E
mersonians often earn a reputation for being passionate and involved both on-campus and off, and Amory Sivertson is no exception. The 2011 Theatre Studies major released La Di Da, her first album of self-described “folk-indie-pop-rock” songs this past spring. Afterwards, she won the “Best Original Song” EVVY award for her song “Beautiful.” And, while spending the current semester at Kasteel Well, she had the opportunity to play her music for two Italian strangers on a train to Venice. “It was amazing because one of the women spoke English and the older one didn’t, so we had an amazing hour-long conversation half in Italian and half in English,” Sivertson says. Sivertson’s music is beautiful yet quirky, with her powerful voice rising above the melodies of her piano. She says she loves experimenting with her voice and finding a way to give her lyrics a vocal texture. Her songs are usually based on real-life experiences involving topics familiar to many college students such as love, peace, and change. In “Hickory Hill,” she sings, “A picnic of songs and a bottle of wine / your heart in my palm and your head in the sky / and it moves me, it just moves me/ if you enjoy wasting the time, is it wasted at all?” Her sound varies drastically between the basic version of her songs with just her voice and the piano to the recorded studio version with other instruments. “[My music] comes from more folk roots but it turns into more of an indie sound once you add more instrumentation,” she acknowledges. The singer-songwriter has been playing the piano since she was about 7 years old. However, her musical career began even earlier than that. “My first song that I ever wrote was when I was 2 years old, and it was called ‘Walkin’ Down the Street,’ and I just repeated that line over and over again and marched around the house,” Sivertson laughs. Although Sivertson wrote a few more songs along the same lines when she was young, it took a tragedy to inspire her first real song put to piano: She wrote it for a member of her sixth grade class who died of cancer. “I
just listened to it recently, and it’s so funny because it sounds nothing like me and the piano is just painfully simple,” she says. Sivertson is not the first musical member of her family. In fact, she was born in Boston while her dad, a drummer, studied at Berklee College of Music. Her mom sings and her sister began playing clarinet at the same time she started playing the piano. Sivertson also played the clarinet for three years but lost patience, although she says some day she might bring back an old song she wrote on it. Currently, she’s learning to play the guitar as well. Sivertson struggles to name specific musicians as musical influences. She grew up listening to female artists like Tracy Chapman and Carly Simon and will listen to “just about every kind of music except for rap, country and Christian,” but is not sure that the sound of her own music reflects those musicians. “Not all musical influences come from other musicians. I get a lot of inspiration from people, from trees, from whatever,” she says. Mike Moschetto, her producer, one-man backing band, and fellow Emerson student had nothing but praise for Sivertson. “She was a pleasure to work with in just about every way,” he said. “She was just really thrilled to be working on recording and releasing an album. Fun was had by all.” Moschetto, a 2011 Audio Production major, hinted that a future collaboration can be expected. As far as other future plans go, Sivertson intends to finish up seven to ten “work-in-progress” songs once she gets back in the States. “Europe’s been good to me so far as inspiration, but there’s only one piano here [at the Castle]. I have a feeling that winter break will be quite productive, though,” she says. Sivertson is not sure how realistic it is to expect another finished album by the end of this school year, but remains hopeful that there will be time to record and perhaps even perform a show on campus next semester. While Sivertson may not know exactly how the next year will play out, there is one thing she is sure of. “I’m pretty confident that I would rather live in a box and get to perform and make music for the rest of my life than live in a house and work a desk job,” she declares. Then she rethinks the statement and adds, “No, not pretty confident. Positive.” Check out her music at: www.myspace.com/amorysivertson
em magazine // Winter 2008