Things have changed for Vancouver based Swiss Canadian electro-pop musician Rykka, who just won the 2013 Peak Performance Project contest , Nov. 21 and took home the $102,700 grand prize to help her further her career. The Peak Performance Project is a program sponsored by Vancouver radio station 102. 3 the Peak to support up and coming B.C. musicians.
“It was a pretty crazy experience,” said Rykka, who released three previous albums under her given name Christina Maria.
She noted they had to complete a number of challenges including making a video; working with charity; making a business plan and spending a $3,000 grant wisely. They also had to attend a boot camp.
“ My life has changed a lot from the Peak. It really has been a lot of work, but I enjoy work. It’s good to be busy,” said Rykka, who has been in the music business for the past 11 years.
“Especially at the boot camp. We had two seminars in the morning, than lunch, then two different seminars in the afternoon. Then at night we’d have showcases or we’d be recording. But I left with lifelong friends from the people I met there,” she enthused.
She has just released her CD Kodiak which is a collection of songs written from the perspective of different animals.
She spent a year working on the album, ‘Kodiak’ and released in May to positive reviews. Her song “Blackie’ was featured in the TV show “Rookie Blue” and the album made the charts in July.
“ The music turned out so different, I decided to change my name too,” she laughed.
“The new music is different. It’s more driving and more rocking,” she said.
The charity she connected with for the Peak program was the David Suzuki Foundation, with the them to get people thinking about nature.
Her music and videos, entitled ‘Nature Rocks!’ is designed to get people out into nature.
“With the David Suzuki Foundation, the idea was to get people mentally into nature. Nature Rocks! was to get people physically out into nature,” she explained adding it is a recent interest of hers.
Al of the songs on Kodiak aren’t from individual animal’s perspectives. She has songs about deep sea fish, migration and some individual animals like crows on ‘Blackie.”
“ I just started writing a lot of songs and they just came out that way and I added more and more of them,” she said.
“ I work on the computer a lot. I come up with the beat then write a bunch of stuff over it,” she summarized.
“ Each one is different though,” she said.
She has never played Lethbridge before.
“I like touring Alberta. I was just there in June. So I’m excited about it. I’ve never been to Lethbridge before,” she said.
“I’ll be touring there as a duo. I play keyboards with one hand and drums with the other. And I have a guitarist. I have a different guitarist (Carl Janzen). We’ll bring the full band later,” she said.
“ But I toured Europe this year as a duo. We played about 70 shows. So I feel it’s good,” she said.
She plays Average Joes, Nov. 30 at 8:30 p.m.
