Corinna Ortiz

Corinna Melanie Ortiz is a 22 year old singer/songwriter/pianist currently residing in Cambridge, MA . With her audiences, she shares an eclectic array of "soulful, ruthlessly-delivered cautionary tales", of the indie-folk, acoustic-cabaret persuasion. Her music is greatly inspired by the varying perspectives she's been offered regarding the unfortunate state of the human condition, the beauty where it still remains, the subject lines of spam emails, the late 1800s and the 1920’s, Vaudeville, Shel Silverstein, the Dark Side, and unlikely parallels. In her art and music, Corinna strives to shed a glaring beam of light on the absurdly extraordinary within the mundane and ordinary interactions of daily life on a personal, romantic, occasionally voyeuristic, consistently cosmic, and universally applicable level. In her performance, all this and often quite a bit more is forcefully conveyed, without remorse, through the dramatic, only 60% sarcastic, cynical melodies that both carry and comprise her narrative songs."She is the sort of person who has fallen in love with the postman.....She will know if you've plagiarized."*********************************************** ******************Born and raised partially in Washington, Corinna began driving her parents insane at the ripe old age of five. Reciting melodies that caught her ear, badly, on the caramel Steinway spinet in her old living room, was a favorite childhood pastime. At the impressionable age of nine, she was forced (I mean, encouraged to partake of her own volition) in piano lessons. This endeavor lasted very briefly, as her kind and patient teacher, Mrs. Janet Peachy, had cats. Large, fat, friendly cats that roamed across the keys like pride lions during the most serious points of an exercise. Those creatures were far more interesting to a nine-year old than arpeggios and scales and Bach and intervals. Being the obstinate-defiant creature that she was, Corinna did not take well to the lessons at all, barely retaining any knowledge of little black dots and time signatures. Her parents, particularly her mother, were not pleased. For the next couple of years following the piano lesson ordeal, the instrument itself transformed before Corinna's very eyes, as a symbol of parental tyranny, strict discipline, and hate, and she rebelliously avoided what her mother hoped and prayed Corinna someday would regard as a “beckoning behemoth of inspiration” . At the emotionally unstable age of 11, her family moved to the suburbs of DC. After several years of being an outcast of the artsy persuasion, in addition to the emotional damage caused by the disapproving, cruel nature of children at this particular age, Corinna discovered she had feelings again. A lot of feelings. Through the particularly tumultuous personal journey that is the high school experience, Corinna found a renewed love for the piano. This love, however, was unlike one she had ever encountered; this was a love that she could speak through. She discovered that this instrument, seeming of a completely different planetary origin than the very same one she despised years ago, had the ability to reach others, when words alone failed to bring light to the darkness, or power to a story. She snowballed with this discovery, continuing to write and compose into college, using what limited technical knowledge she had of the piano, her genetically acquired ear, and those entirely necessary periods of blind desire and determination, to compose, create and channel. In college, thanks to the support of life/perspective altering friends, lovers, and her amazing, supportive family, she slowly became confident enough to begin sharing her work for actual audiences. Performing for tiny, loving audiences in venues such as The Wildflower Café in Bethlehem, Pa, and the Red Door Café at her college, she found comfort, strength, and an outlet through her work and performances. She became aware of the effect she seemed to have on the people she shared her songs with, and the joy she got from sharing her music and incorporating others into the spectacle of performance. Only then did Corinna begin to fully realize her passion for empowering others though the arts, and giving those unspeakable and inarticulatelable life experiences a voice. She now dares to speculate, with glee, a normal amount of uncertainly and a heightened, ever-developing sense of blind purpose, that this is only the beginning… ************************************************************ "...her voice was hauntingly beautiful during the intro of "R.A.W." ...throughout the piece, her singing resonated with all four women's heart and soul. ARRT is so blessed to have her..." -Producer Mariko Kanto of the Actor's Refuge Repertory Theater http://www.arrters.org