Dance With Me

“My day began with gray clouds but it ended with the full force of the wind. Words cannot describe how much I Love your CD. I played every song twice sometimes three times. Then played the entire CD over and over. The only disappointment is there's only six songs but surely they must be six of the most beautiful songs ever written. This is the music of my life at the moment. I haven't been able to listen to music for some months now but your lyrics and voice are singing me better. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx IT'S BRILLIANT!!” Andrew Warboys

Parissa Bouas - BIO
It’s not hard to see why multi award winning, Greek Australian chanteuse, PARISSA BOUAS, has won a legion of fans and respect for her performances, both abroad and nationally, with Australia’s definitive coffee house couple, The Hottentots. With 6 internationally acclaimed albums, a swag of accolades and years of performing, writing and recording in folk /world music styles, PARISSA is now detouring, following the muse down a fabulously kitsch, Euro vintage jazz , alt pop path. Musically, her new sound could be the lovechild of Billie Holiday and Tom Waits meeting in a Parisian nightclub, where Gypsies play songs of love and loss, with an occasional distinctly South American twist.

With a successful Pozible crowd funding campaign in 2012, PARISSA released her first digital single, ‘Sad Eyes’, a sultry, gypsy jazz tune, which reached the ISC semi finals and won the coveted SONG OF THE YEAR and BEST JAZZ SONG categories at the recent Dolphin Music Awards. It has also received extensive air play on ‘The Inside Sleeve’ ABC RN, community radio and 2LM commercial radio.

Her debut solo CD, “The Full Force of the Wind”, due to be released in October 2013, is her first collaboration with Dutch multi instrumentalist, instrument builder and producer Michiel Hollanders. Recorded in Australia and Holland and mastered at LOUD! in Amsterdam, the exotic timbres of velofoon, saw, fietsband bass, claude viol and bandoneon mesh perfectly with Parissa’s sublime, moody melodies, and eclectic vocal stylings , which on this album, lend more to the jazzy sounds of Melody Gardot and Madeleine Peyroux. Supported by these rich and quirky arrangements she draws upon elements of vintage jazz, latin, pop and Manouche, with expressive vocals that are both sensitive and seductive.

Her musical support team is unconventional and impressive: Dutch virtuoso bandoneonist Marc Constandse ‘s musical presence is nuanced, passionate and rhythmic. He also features on ‘Sad Eyes’ with ‘grungy’ percussion. Australia’s pre eminent Brazilian specialist, Doug De Vries, seduces us with 10 string guitar, rebolo and cavaquinho on the Latin influenced, title track ‘The Full Force of the Wind’ and on ‘Honey and Candlelight’. But it is Michiel Hollanders and Parissa’s combined magic that brings all the elements together into a very unique sounding album.

A free-spirited artist who is both playful , sassy and profound, PARISSA’s performances are mesmerizing. She wraps her audience in a veil of utter captivation with a voice that alternates “between a tone that would cut glass and breathy seduction”. PARISSA’S songs offer deeply compelling evocations of love, loss and heartache, while her voice offers a deep level of emotional authority and technical fluency.

“Parissa has a voice that would aggravate angels with it’s beauty” Philip Adams ABC RN

PARISSA’S route has been an unconventional one. During school years she entertained herself by dancing, singing and acting professionally from 13 years of age. After leaving school she joined choirs, originals pop band ‘ The Marcos Family’, sang in Sydney Salsa bands and travelled to Nicaragua to pick coffee for the Sandinistas, after which she joined Andean folk group, Raices de Peru, and became passionate about Latin American music. Upon return to Sydney, she studied external courses at the Sydney Conservatorium and became an award winning student of the Contemporary Music degree at Southern Cross University.