“…coming to understand and reclaim what matters most…” — Giselle And Erik’s “Take It All Away”
Originally from Orlando and Gainesville, FL and currently based in Nashville, TN. How do you balance your personal and professional lives?
Well, it’s really as much about flexibility as it is balance! Our schedule varies each week (e.g. shows at night, recording sessions, etc.) so we have to be flexible, but we do a good job of taking time each day for our personal lives. Erik skateboards and loves practicing card magic while Giselle enjoys reading, journaling and exploring Nashville on walks.
Together, we love having coffee outside together in the morning and cooking together at night. We also try to schedule time with friends and family just like we would schedule professional obligations. At the end of the day, there’s always going to be more work to do the next day, and filling our personal cup is important for us to stay healthy, happy, and at our best.
Pairing Giselle’s warm, lyrical voice and mellow piano with the sweet sounds of Erik’s jazz and classical guitar. What musical influences have shaped your sound?
My (Erik) guitar sound is a fusion of my favorite guitar players: Django Reinhardt, Yamandu Costa, Sylvain Luc, and Joe Pass. I studied under Ulisses Rocha, an accomplished guitar performer from Brazil, so my guitar approach is largely influenced by him.
My (Giselle) largest musical influence is Norah Jones. I’ve loved her music since I was in middle school, and I’m always finding something new in her music that inspires me. I also love Carole King, Aiofe O’Donovan, Sara Bareilles, and Cecile McLorin Salvant.
What are the biggest challenges and rewards of being a husband-wife duo?
The biggest challenge is separating when you have to communicate as business partners versus as spouses. As Erik says, “sometimes you just want to come home and talk smack about your coworkers” — haha! Can’t quite do that in our case. In the 3 years we’ve been working together, we’ve gotten much better at setting the “business partner or spouse” boundary with each other. We also both have very strong opinions (which can be helpful and hurtful!) so we’ve had to learn how to balance that in our work.
The rewards feel as high as life. Logistically, it’s a blessing to be able to experience traveling and touring together. And creating something together that is part of both of us is something we will always have — in some ways, we’re documenting the seasons of our life. We know each other so well and have incredible trust and belief in one another. Like many artists, our music is very personal to us, and being able to work alongside the person you trust most is a gift.
Performing on the Disney Dream cruise ship for five months. How do you combine elements of folk and jazz in your music?
Our music often has a blend of folk lyrics and melody over more colorful, jazz-inspired harmony and even improvisation. Some songs, whether ours or covers, lean more towards folk, some jazz,
some singer-songwriter, so having all of those elements in our toolbox just gives us more colors to choose from as we write and perform.
How has your music evolved over time?
We met playing jazz together in the big band at the University of Florida, and over time, we played in smaller groups and found that we really enjoyed playing as a duo. Giselle writes more singer/songwriter style music on the piano, and Erik writes more jazz, so a lot of our music is a marriage (literally!) of our two approaches. In our early writing (not yet released), you can more easily pinpoint “Giselle wrote this or, Erik wrote this,” but we’re currently trying to lean into blending our styles and instrumentation.
Debut single, “Full Glass of Life” from the Healing EP. What are the themes and messages behind your songs?
Our upcoming EP, Healing, is a concept EP about our experiences through Erik’s open heart surgery and recovery in 2021–22. The songs on the EP reflect a range of emotions like fear, guilt, faith and, ultimately, hope and perseverance. We want the music to be enjoyable for listeners separate from knowing our story, but it was also important to us to tell the whole story and not to shy away from its complexity and vulnerability.
What are your favorite venues to play?
Our favorite venues are listening room environments. We joke that we want to invite audiences into our living room with us — telling stories, enjoying music, even some unfiltered banter. We love playing in the intimacy of attentive audiences, and trying to break the barrier between us and the audience.
“Take It All Away,” the second single from the upcoming EP. “After facing open heart surgery, ‘Take It All Away’ is about us coming to understand and reclaim what matters most. Sharing this life with the people we love is our biggest blessing.” What do you hope to achieve with your music?
With our upcoming EP, we hope our music and vulnerability can provide comfort and hope to listeners as they struggle through whatever their personal challenge is. Really, with all of our music, we seek to give people an opportunity to stop and feel their emotions.
For this particular project, we’re also trying to raise awareness for congenital heart disease (CHD). 1 in 100 children and adults are impacted by CHD (Source: Adult Congenital Heart Association). We feel a responsibility to do our part to tell our story — to hopefully help others through our music, as well as collaborate to expand and amplify its impact.
What are some of your standout moments from your career so far?
We’re proud of our back-to-back international DownBeat Student Music Awards, and we’re especially proud to have been awarded for submissions that included our original music (not-yet-released) and original arrangements.
Another standout moment for us is the story of how we got the opportunity to perform for Disney. Between the pandemic and Erik’s surgery and recovery, we weren’t able to be out performing. Instead, we started sharing what we called “Song Sketches” on Instagram Reels. Song Sketches were short clips of ideas we had for original songs, and we ended up with a catalog of ~100 of them. Out of the blue, we received a DM from another musician couple who saw our videos and wanted to pass our information along to an agent who was pitching to Disney — Erik thought this was 100% spam! But — sure enough — it was NOT spam and two weeks later, we got our offer to perform on the ship for 4.5 months. We left port just 3 weeks after Erik’s Master’s graduation…barely enough time to get all the necessary paperwork done!
We love this story because it reminds us that life can really be just that unpredictable and you never know when or how you’ll reap the fruits of your labor. Performing for Disney has opened so many doors for us personally and professionally and — just like that couple did for us — we want to pay it forward throughout our career.
What advice would you give to other aspiring musicians?
We would pass along the advice that one of our college mentors gave us, “Opportunities come to those who show up.” And show up, again, and again, and again. And, adding our own advice to that, when you show up: 1) be prepared and 2) be genuine.
What’s ahead?
Our debut EP, Healing, is coming out this fall, and we’re continuing to organize shows and collaborations to amplify this project.
After that, we’re excited to keep the momentum going and continue to release the original music that we have in our back pocket! (Remember those 100+ song sketches?!?)