Serenada

Serenada EP And Video Out Now

Recently I’ve talked about it in several articles, but yesterday it finally happened: My first classical EP Serenada was released. The album contains seven Croatian songs by Josip Hatze. Apparently I’m the only German singer to arrange and sing this kind of repertoire. What an honour!

Cover of “Serenada”

In March I gave you a first impression of my work: the video of the last track “Suzi”. Last Saturday I filmed another video of the title song “Serenada”. Do you remember under which circumstances I had written the ballad “Tvoje Plave Oči”? In August of last year I provided you with some insights of a night of unfulfilled longing at the Lakes of Plitvice. The lyrics of “Serenada” perfectly fit the emotional state I was captured in. So I made up my mind to show you this episode of my life in the video. To be honest, I didn’t wear such an elegant velvet dress at my hotel room. I also left out the tears which are just as meaningless as the hormones producing the feeling of being in love. In the end only music remains.

Yes, I’m really delighted about the new EP Serenada! It’s my masterpiece, the first record to show you the true abilities of my voice. I’m not sure if I will ever go back to ‘alien pop’. For now I simply know that I will make a video of “Tvoje Plave Oči” in June. Maybe I will be inspired once more in Croatia even though I’m so through with songs about unrequited love! By the way, in the meantime I recorded an English and a French version of that song. The French version “Tes Yeux Bleus” turned out to be my favourite! Whatever happens after that: I will definitely focus more an the classical type of music like modern opera.

Serenada: Seven Croatian songs

The release date of the Serenada album has finally been set: It’s on April 15th, 2016. My first classical EP contains seven chosen Croatian songs by Josip Hatze:

1. Ljubav
2. Mio Si Mi (originally “Mila Si Mi”)
3. Cvati, Cvati, Ružice
4. Večernje Zvono
5. Serenada
6. Kiša Pada
7. Suzi

Yesterday I had a photo shooting with Christina Katz who had also taken the promotion pictures for The Muse. I wore one of my elegant dresses from Daniel Rabe who is my favourite Berlin designer. My pink era is definitely over! Now it’s time for class and quality. I hope you’ll also like the outcome of my latest photo session.

In order to give you a first impression of my forthcoming record, I made a short promotion trailer containing snippets of all the seven tracks. I truly love singing in Croatian! Today my Serbian teacher Nena announced to provide me with more Croatian repertoire next week. Is this the end of ‘alien pop’? Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure: Times have changed and I’m not the same musician I used to be five or six years ago. If I’m meant to continue my musical career in Croatian, I see no reason to protest! 😉

My first video from the Serenada album is going to be released on March 13th: I decided to sing “Suzi” on it, a song dedicated to a tear. I also have plans to film a “Serenada” video which will be out on April 15th – on the day of the digital release.

Serenada Gets Ready

More than three weeks have past since my last article, but I’m still alive. I’ve just come home from Planet Earth Studios where I recorded another two songs for my classical record Serenada. As I had mentioned before, it’s a collection of songs from the Croatian composer Josip Hatze. Thus, the entire record is sung in Croatian which is a beautiful language in my opinion.

Originally Serenada was meant to contain five songs, but in the meantime I also discovered “Mila Si Mi” (I changed it to “Mio Si Mi” to refer to a man) and “Kiša Pada”. Both songs fit my story of unhappy love to be revealed on the record. Pretty thoroughly did I choose the tracks and compiled them in the correct order to develop the story. If you have listened to music from Croatia before, you might have noticed that it tends to be very emotional. By the way, longing and unrequited love is also a popular topic in Croatian rock music.

However, let’s stick to my classical record Serenada now. A few days ago I shot the music video for “Suzi”, a song dedicated to a tear. It’s a very gloomy little film in black and white to correspond to the lyrics of “Suzi”, the last song on the album. The video will be out in February or March. As soon as I know the release date, I will tell you more. So take care!

The Anna Aliena CD shop

Have you visited my new CD shop? I promise you that this part of my website is the only place where you can buy all my CDs! In addition, I will personally sign the purchased album for you if you wish. Concerning my forthcoming EP The Muse, I made up my mind not to give the CD to any external distributor. As a musician you hardly ever know where the money ends up … You better order The Muse here and get Alien Pop for free.

Of course my CD shop has been authorized by my label Go!Diva Records which is mainly responsible for distributing my records. As you can see on the picture, I have never published my debut Silly Little Boys (2011) on CD. Nevertheless, my first EP and the single Gloomy Sunday (2012) are available at the big download stores such as Amazon and iTunes.

At the moment I only accept your payment via PayPal. All the prices include package and shipment to your home address – no matter where you live. If you make an order on my website, your CD will be accompanied by a handwritten letter from me to you. Many of you already know how much I love the interaction with my fans. Whenever you leave a comment on my social media sites, I try to reply to you as soon as possible.

Tomorrow I’m going to start recording my classical EP Serenada which will probably be out next spring. For details, please read my blog post “Preview Of A Classical Record“.

Preview Of A Classical Record

In 2010 I made my first attempt to produce a classical record. Some months before my separation from the duo ShirayasDream we released an EP called ”Kleiner Vogel Liebe”. All the tracks were written and composed by my colleague Oliver Höhne and me. From time to time I listen to my old repertoire to convince myself of my continuous positive development as a singer and composer … Of course I would do many things differently nowadays!

Now it’s time for another classical EP. At the beginning of this week I started to arrange five songs by Josip Hatze. After my love song “Tvoje Plave Oči” on my forthcoming record The Muse I feel like singing more Croatian repertoire. I really love the sound of that language!

Hatze (1879 – 1959) was one of the most prominent Croatian composers. He came from Split and wrote numerous songs like “Suzi”, ”Serenada” and “Ljubav”. His music strongly attracts me because it has great moments of operatic drama. I chose five songs to depict another moving story of love, the pain of love and longing. On my Hatze EP I will make use of vast orchestration to build a perfect ground for real operatic singing.

On my previous releases I haven’t shown the entire capacities of my voice. As I’m most interested in challenges, the time is ripe for guiding my listeners to new grounds. I’m probably the first German singer to record Hatze’s music. It’s also quite uncommon to be so ambitious in learning his language here in Germany. Nevertheless, I have never followed the masses – I do it my way! 😉 As a musician I can only concentrate on repertoire which has found the way to my heart.

Thus, I’m extraordinarily optimistic to present you my classical EP Serenada next spring. It might be out on my birthday in March. I will also film a gloomy music video to promote “Suzi”, a song dedicated to a tear. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please feel free to listen to Lidija Horvat Dunjko’s interpretation in the YouTube video. In my opinion she’s a very marvelous lyrical soprano.

Before you will be allowed to hear my own version, I’m looking forward to the release of my ballad EP The Muse on October 30th. Soon you will be able to preorder the CD on my website. I’ve really done my best to create beautiful artwork for it! 🙂