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The Glen Cove-raised singer-songwriter, who has been living in Boston since graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2005, hopes to have her new album out next year. "I'm not sure if I'm going to put out another EP or a full-length," she said. "Right now I'm just messing around. The new stuff is coming." The break has done Santella a world of good, giving her the chance to live her life and find inspiration for her art. "You need to live life in order to create art about life," she said. "It's easy to fall into the trap of sitting in a room and staring at a wall and writing songs about sitting in a room and staring at a wall. I'm 22. I want to have a good time. The art will follow." And the art has followed, as she continues to write new material for her next record. There are still a number of uncertainties about the record, though. Santella's first, all-acoustic, album was recorded and produced on a whim at the Nashville, Tenn. home of The Click Five's Ben Roman, during a visit. Odds are this upcoming album will be just as spontaneous. She has no idea where she will record it or who will produce it, she just plans on "going where the opportunity leads [her]." Santella has known she was destined to be a musician since she was two-years-old. That's when she saw violinist Itzhak Perlman on Sesame Street. "I said, 'Mommy, I want that.' She asked, 'Do you even know what that is?' and I said, 'No, but I want it,'" she said. Her mother bought her a child-sized violin and she began taking lessons. At the age of six she joined her community theater, sticking with it all through high school. In the tenth grade she began attending Nassau BOCES. The first half of her day followed a typical high schooler's schedule, but the second half of her day was at a cultural arts center. Then, pop music infected her life. Hanson came out in 1997. Britney Spears, 'Nsync, the Backstreet Boys and many others came out around the same time. Though this wasn't the type of music she listened to, it made her realize she might not be too young to write her own songs. "I got a guitar and started playing," Santella said. "In my senior year of high school, I realized I was happier doing my own music. It was more appealing than singing other people's words." She was introduced to Berklee at a college fair and fell in love with the college's well-rounded and contemporary music program immediately. "I couldn't have gone anywhere else. Music is what I am," she said. "Before taking songwriting courses [at Berklee] my first semester, I was unsure; but once I took them, they changed my life." Aware of the half-mocking, Berklee adage of "When you don't know, go pro," she became a professional studies major, which she feels was the best decision she could have made. By meeting with the director of the program, Santella was able to custom design her own program, which would best suit her needs as a student and musician. "I wanted to be the strongest and most informed singer-songwriter I could be," she said. "So I was able to come up with a program that was mostly songwriting and some music business and performing classes that were applicable to me as an artist and songwriter." "People think music school is just playing music all day. But we took 10 classes a semester and often were in midnight studio sessions [most days of the week]," she said. "It's not like going to med school, then becoming a doctor. While we're in school, we're gigging and writing the whole time. It's like a 24-hour job." Though she didn't play many gigs in Boston because of her grueling schedule at school, she played out often when home on Long Island for breaks. After putting out her EP, she went on a Northeast tour, from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, during the summer of 2004. She played many gigs on Long Island, playing bars and clubs as well as street fairs. Through the Long Island Music Coalition she was able to become a part of the local scene despite being away from the area during the school year. Now that she's preparing a new album, she's hoping to start gigging again, both in Boston and when she visits Long Island, in order to test her material. Fans of intelligently crafted and melodic, acoustic pop music should definitely keep their ears and eyes open for Santella's next album. 0 4 . 1 7 . 0 6
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fter a brief respite from music, Jillian Santella has picked up her guitar again and is currently penning the tunes for the follow-up album to her 2004 debut, The July EP.
