Life is going swimmingly for Jennifer Juliette. The Welsh singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has just released her debut EP Anchor, showcasing her powerful, artistic and inspired blend of classical sophistication and pop accessibility. Delivering searing melodies and lyrics drawn from personal experience with boundless creative energy, the disc is just the latest notch on her career belt. Over the last decade, Juliette has performed at a number of prestigious venues around the world, including the Sydney Opera House, the Vienna Opera House and the Royal Albert Hall in London. Trained as a concert pianist, she also plays guitar, violin and cello and has worked in various orchestra settings. In 2019, she founded an international women’s choir which raised money for homeless shelters across Berlin. Today, for some reason I cannot fathom, she has decided to take the plunge and answer my ridiculous questions. Let’s see if she sinks or swims:
Introduce yourself: Name, age (feel free to lie), home base and any other details you’d care to share — height / weight / identifying marks / astrology sign / your choice.
Jennifer Juliette, 28, Berlin but Welsh by birth! 5’8 (183 cm), you never ask a lady her weight! Beauty spot on left cheek. No clue on the astrology…
What is your musical origin story?
Discovered age four in a South Welsh baptist church trying to harmonize with the hymns, taken under the wing of an older organist who trained me in several instruments.
What’s your latest project?
Writing new Celtic-style music. Therapeutic as hell and I’m trying to get a modern twist on it. It’s hard!
What truly sets you apart from other artists?
My roots, my ability to weave the Celtic into the new, speaking a whole bunch of languages, founding my own choir, playing competitive chess and video games.
How will my life improve by listening to your music?
You need these melodies in your life. They’re epic.
Tell us about the first song you wrote and / or the first gig you played.
First song, about heartbreak, age 14. I was a fragile one. First gig? Church, age five! I spiced up communion
What is the best / worst / strangest / most memorable performance you have given?
Most memorable? At a funeral. I sang an old Welsh song and a man with Alzheimer’s remembered it and started to sing along.
What is the best / worst / strangest / most memorable performance you’ve seen?
The strangest thing I’ve seen was a performance of poetry while lying down. But it was also somehow very cool.
What living or dead artists would you like to collaborate with?
Alexis Ffrench and Lindsey Stirling. That would be too much talent for one room.
What artist or style of music do you love that would surprise people?
I can rap the entirety of I Need A Doctor by Dr Dre and Eminem and it’s my gym song until I die.
What words do you hope people use when they describe you?
Innovative, kind, unusual.
What useful (or useless) skills do you have outside of music?
I can pick up a language pretty quickly — on a holiday even — and I like to immerse myself in a culture and speak to the locals.
If money was no object, where would you live?
Between Prague and Fiji. Beautiful city, untouched beaches. Best of both worlds.
What would you like to be reincarnated as?
Enya. Can I say this for someone who’s alive?
Which historical event do you wish you had witnessed?
Pompeii. It fascinates me somehow. And terribly saddens me.
What’s your idea of perfect happiness / total misery?
Perfect happiness is when you’re singing/playing instruments with a group of others and you’re all perfectly in tune, harmony and rhythm. It’s like a floating cloud. Misery is living in a cage.
What are your pet peeves?
Grammar. I am the worst with this I’m afraid.
What’s your greatest regret?
That I didn’t start putting my music out sooner.
What are you afraid of?
Spiders. Deathly afraid. I wish I was one of those people who could scoop them up in one hand but no.
What’s always in your refrigerator?
Chocolate and tomatoes!
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would be excellent at dancing! Sadly I can’t dance at all. But I love the beauty of it and the movements, in every form of dance. True art.
If you had one day to spend as you please without any consequences, what would you do?
I would eat every single type of ice cream in the world with zero calories! I hate to be limited to one scoop every time I find a new place.
What’s the silliest thing you believed as a child?
I believed that limes were green lemons for an embarrassingly long time.
What was your favourite class in school and why?
French! Because it’s so beautiful. And I think it’s really similar to English. I call it English with a sexy accent.
What was the worst job you ever had?
At 15 I was a waitress and men used to try and touch my legs and call me sexual things. Noooo thank you.
What’s the best and / or worst advice you were ever given?
My friends tell me to chill out and take time to relax when I need, and since living in Berlin, I really do that. Can’t do a thing if I’m stressed!
Listen to Anchor below, watch the video for Small Voice above, and find out more about Jennifer Juliette at her website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
