Marinda+Solari

Bossa Nova / Chanson française / Folk

Biography :

Marinda + Solari attended The American School of Paris and later moved to London where they studied Folklore of the Americas with funding and support from Institut Français and The Fabian Society.

Marinda received her Bachelor of Arts in the History of Science at Dalhousie University and later worked as an Archivist for the Smithsonian Centre for Folk-life and Cultural Heritage. She assisted in various field work projects in Louisiana. In 2004 she won the Canadian Boadcasting Corporation National Poetry Contest. In 2005 she lived in Dakar, Senegal and led music workshops in N’Zerekore, Guinea, before accepting an invitation to work as a session vocalist in London.

As a teenager, Solari fronted the renowned Nat King Cole tribute band Paper Moon! He later undertook a degree in Communication at MIT before relocating to Canada to pursue a career in Ethnomusicology. He took a position as Aide to the Senior Anglophone Advisor to the Mexican Tourist Board in Canada.

Both Marinda + Solari became interested in the idea of pre-electric culture, especially in music as communication. In a chance collaborative effort between Smithsonian Centre, Canada Council for the Arts and the Mexican Tourist Board, Marinda + Solari was born. Marinda was employed to identify and catalogue potentially anti-democratic music from the states of Texas and Chihuahua (especially Militant Southern hip-hop and Narco-Corridos) and Solari assisted in a trilateral committee (USCR) to redirect tourists from the border of Ciudad Juarez to El Paso. However, at the beginning of the economic crash in 2007, their respective projects fell through. They found themselves in Toronto. Still enthused with the relationship between acoustic and electric space they were asked by a film production team to write songs based on the great Spanish Court Paintings of the 17th Century. Their first EP was entitled ‘The King James Version’ and was featured in the Award-winning short film ‘Fireplaces’ (2007 - Shooting People Productions).

Marinda + Solari traveled to New York City to produce their second EP entitled ‘Cup of Tea’ (TIMAwards Best Jazz -2008). They gave sold out performances at Otto’s Shrunken Head in Manhattan and impromptu performances at Open Stages in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Marinda + Solari’s double album ‘Austro-Hungary’ was scheduled for major label production in late 2008 after they struck a tentative deal with Sony Music in France. However, all contracts and agreements were annulled due to the Sony/BMG merger/acquisition that same year. In 2009 they independently co-produced their first full-length album ‘Motif’ (funded by the Provincial government of Nova Scotia in Canada), released in 2010. After brief tours in France and Switzerland the duo relocated to Montreal.