Interview with Marsha Bartenetti
Marsha Bartenetti is a Jazz musician.
Why did you want to be a professional musician?
I started singing in High School in the late 60's. I was in a FolkRock band. After High School I partnered with my future husband in the San Francisco Bay Area where we played professionally for 11 years. Doing music professionally really just flowed from one thing to the next and there was no Plan B. We just knew this was our path. We wrote many of our songs, and clubs provided a good living for working musicians at the time. I have since divorced and after a hiatus from the business have, over the last 8 years, been doing solo performing and recording. I work with some of the finest musicians!
What inspires your music?
Life experiences inspire my music. Unrequited love, loss beginnings, loneliness, joy, all of our emotions - without judgement.
What things get you in the mood to write songs or do lyrics come spontaneously?
Phrases I read or hear from people, sometimes films, often pop into my mind as lyric ideas. I have jotted a ton of them!
How do you want your music to affect people?
Most of all I want my audience to come away feeling they have been touched in some way; that we have made a connection somehow through the music and performance and they have reconnected with something within themselves.
Do you test out your songs before releasing them? How do you do this?
As of late, I am mostly singing jazz or doing reimagining of "standards" from the 60's 70's. When we do recordings, I do send them out to people I know and respect before releasing them.
How do you prepare for a gig?
I find a subject I want to bring to the stage (Usually it has everything to do with aspects of love) and fill in a "story arc" with songs; a beginning, a middle, and an end. I want to take the audience through something.
It's incredible when songs pop into my mind during the creation process, and sometimes new ones pop in to replace one of the initial choices. They find me!
What is your favorite song that you've written?
I haven't written for awhile, but one of the favorite songs I've recorded is "I Can't Make You Love Me" by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin. It's a song requested at every one of my shows.
Has there been a reaction to one of your songs that you've been surprised by?
I won Best Vocalist on one of our original songs in the International, American Songwriters Association contest. That was exciting and very cool. One of my most important life markers.
What are some ways that you promote yourself?
As bad as I am with this, I do have someone helping with promotion on social media. The business has greatly changed since I first got started.
What would you say has been the biggest challenge of your career?
Career VS Relationships and how to make them both work together.
Politics.
Are there advantages to being an independent musician?
It's always a balancing act. I do like having control, however, it takes a team to really move everything forward.
I'm semi-retired now and loving the freedom I have to explore all kinds of genres and arrangements.