1. Sena, how did it all begin with you and the music?
2. Who influenced you the most as a musician?
3. What made you transform from an Actress to a Poet and Spoken Word Performer to a Songwriter and Singer?
4. Is there a difference between writing poetry and writing songs?
5. What do you like the most, acting, writing Poetry or writing Songs and Sing?
6. How do you manage all your tasks? You also create Fashion, a whole other business, how much can you accomplish altogether?
7. Speaking about dreams, what are you up to, any plans?

1. Sena, how did it all begin with you and the music?

continued....

I knew, he was not the musician I was searching .... I did not even tell him about my deepest secret, I kept my longing for music silently locked up... 10 Years later waiting at a red light I saw him cruising around in his big car with other blonde young girls while he was getting older and older, and I felt sorry for him.

A year later I came across another famous producer and musician, singer and songwriter. He was a womanizer as well, but he was kinda cool and I liked him and I studied him closely. He suffered and cried in my arms because his wife had left him because of his affairs, it was the end of a tremendous career they had together as a singing couple. I was seventeen and told him to fight for her and show her how much he loved her and stop his stupid flings. He did not listen. He was over the peak of his career as a performer and started managing and promoting bands and other singers and I was listening to all of them in his studio and - stayed mute. There were far too many drugs involved; it was way too much confusion. I just could not open my heart to singing, it did not feel safe. I do not function very well in unhealthy and dishonest surroundings. My soul cringes ...

I later came across many more musicians, but never had the urge to really work with any of them. It was as if I was in a cocoon, a shell, waiting for something to happen that I myself could not understand. Everywhere I was an outsider, I did not fit in; but I had all these strange experiences, for example I tried to get into a famous acting school, the "Otto Falkenberg School" in Munich, where after my test the director kissed my hand and said:" what the hell do you want in this school, you belong on a stage" ... that was disturbing because I really wanted to be part of a community, study like all the others ...But obviously there was another plan for my life. I met a theatre Director and started out as a volunteer at a state theatre and quickly worked myself up into being his directing assistant, (sometimes he left me alone with these famous actors and I rehearsed and directed whole theatre scenes with them and they did listen to me) - 4 years later I was co-founding a very eccentric theatre group... "The Magic Flute" ,

at that time I also started taking singing lessons here and there, but the music was not funky enough, it was not my taste... like in school as a child...

I stayed with the words... and also danced a lot, I studied classical plays and watched every stage actor who was extraordinary, I knew even with all my talent I needed a good speaking technique as an aspiring stage actress.

Somebody told me about this extraordinary old lady, Professor Margaret Langen. All the top actors came from far to take private classes for improvement of their breathing and voice techniques, she was an impressive personality. She took me in for a very reasonable price because she liked my spirit, she was hard on me and to tell you the truth, her lessons were very dry and technical, and it took me years to really understand what she tried to teach me. It all started to make sense long after I had left her lessons. She had taught me precision in speaking. The eye opener happened while I was on tour with a classical play. There was this old actor who gave me a simple secret that revealed a whole new world for me. I always knew that acting is a gift from God, and if there is any ego involved it does not really work. If there was any competition or craving for success involved then this what I tried to express did not flow, the magic only happens when you leave your ego behind and become nothing but an instrument, and the time frame in which that transformation happens is also a gift, you cannot make it happen, it happens within you, without your help. So this old actor saw my concerns. We played in a theatre with 2000 seats, no microphones involved. I had a special way to speak naturally, while my partners were screaming even their low key parts, and I just knew that they were wrong. You cannot scream some intimate sentence like "I love you" only because the theatre is big; there must be a technique how you fill the space with your voice without exaggerating, but how? The breathing technique alone is not the secret ....

The afternoon before the first show the old man told me the secret: "you have to feel the space of this huge theatre inside of you" ...

Aha ... and ... how do I feel that? - "it is very simple" he smiled, "come with me" and he took me by the hand and guided me to the second mezzanine to the seat that was the furthest away from the stage. "Now look onto the stage and imagine yourself down there, speaking" he said, watching me while I followed his instructions; then he again took me by he hand and we walked through all the different rows until we were down in the parquet, we walked through the rows until he said: "and now we do the opposite". We went onto the stage. He made me look to the empty audience seats, up to the last row where we had started out. He made me visualize every single seat filled with a person, and made me visualize that I speak to them personally. "it is your focus that makes them hear you, it is your precision with your language and your concentration, your words must be like an arrow" ...

His advice worked. I never screamed on stage but for the right reasons, and I was always heard, even when I whispered. All these years of acting on stage gave me a good foundation for what is waiting for me in the near future.

In Munich, parallel to my acting career, I had the pleasure to be a scholar of Miss Bennie Gillette, African - American former Opera, Jazz and Blues Singer from NYC, who taught me a lot Italian Belcanto technique, the traditional classical technique and I sang all these jazz standards and Bennie gave me a lot of tasks to figure out. I think I drove her mad crazy because for many years I did not do anything with my singing, no serious performances, ok, I did some open mics but did never visualize myself in a musical or working with a cover band, I just did not find anybody with whom I could start this new journey, a musical partner who was on the same page, with whom I could fly.

When I published my first poetry book "softly but highly dangerous I open your heart" I did readings or better, I performed, and took the poems to the next level, adding music, performing, half singing half screaming, acting them out. Then I met Landy who became my first Guitar Player and partner in crime ...We did some crazy stuff together.

But still, I knew I was an excellent lyricist, and I knew I needed a "midwife" (or "midwife-man") to help me getting my music out of my innermost being, that is why I wanted to move to NYC, I had this inner calling... I came to NY all by myself with no personal attachments or musical connections at all but this tiny inner voice...