PERFORMER
This first generation Canadian from fiery Italian roots is a born artist. She is at home and luminous onstage, at the piano, on the dance floor, and cabaret. We imagine she entered the world belting her arrival – a massive voice from a small ringletted creature. At age four she was in piano and dance lessons, she grew up singing gospel, rock and soul for her church choir, and spent her high school years immersed in modern dance.
Amanda went on to study Music Theatre at Sheridan College and in 1998 found her voice as a singer/songwriter. After the initial strike of creative lightning, Amanda continued to feed herself and those around her with the soft earthy tones of her voice, her sensual and powerful lyrics, and her piano rearing up like a flayed circus horse.
Never content with a narrow artistic focus, Amanda broke from writing music for five years to focus on music theatre and movement performance, obtaining a degree from the University of Windsor. Selected credits include the Charlottetown Young Company, The St. Lawrence Stage Company, Showboat Festival, Theatre Muskoka, and Magnus Theatre. Her movement work is daring and surprising, and her talents as a comedic actor cannot be exaggerated (though Amanda, for those that know and love her, know that she is prone to exaggeration of various kinds). She is a bold storyteller, and is equally expressive in her body and voice as she is in her face.
Over the years Amanda performed with various pop/rock bands touring Canada and the USA, finally forming her own funk / soul band in 2010 - MR and the SC (Menda Rose and the Sweet Collective), of which a five-track EP was released.
Amanda made a return trip into her own music releasing two, live off-the-floor, music videos. She also released a 12-track, raw album of only piano and voice, featuring 15 years of songwriting titled Hammers & Bones (2012). As source material Amanda drew upon life experiences, diary entries, arguments, anger, rants, love, people close and distant. Amanda’s music is born of many lines. It is a mix of folk, rock, music theatre, tongue-in-cheek humour, and emotive storytelling. In her music, intense harmony and piano tease each other, laying bare soulful truths, disarming the listener with rich tones and unexpected turns.