Powerhouse Montreal Singer Rosa Laricchiuta Unleashes New Black Rose Maze Project

How can you not like and appreciate Rosa Laricchiuta? With a seeming permanent smile, and infectiously positive outlook on life, an irrepressible personality that captures your attention from minute one. The Montreal singer/songwriter truly is a force or nature, and a singular musical talent that is about to become an international sensation, thanks to her latest project – the melodic hard rock album, Black Rose Maze.

A project of the ground-breaking Italian label Frontiers Music, Black Rose Maze is essentially an extension of Laricchiuta herself, as it is a musical concoction created by the label to surround her with exceptional musicians, compelling and superlatively-crafted songs, and a platform with which to break out of the province of Quebec, where she is already a beloved household name.

The self-titled release of the debut Black Rose Maze album will come out Aug. 7 worldwide in digital and physical formats and sees Laricchiuta bubbling over with excitement and enthusiasm.

“It was originally supposed to come out in October, so I am happy that it’s now coming out in August, because there’s nothing really going on this summer. And I do feel excited but also a little anxious. I have released some albums. I did my first English EP a number of years ago [2017] and it was great. But now the heat is on as they say, because this is now worldwide; this is international. I am already getting so many comments from places like the U.K. and Russia and all over Europe. I’ve never had that before. Some people like it, some people don’t like the songs but that is the name of the gamer in this business,” she said from her home in Montreal.

“But I also feel really confident because I am so confident about the songs and the team and the collaboration and the producer and Frontiers. I am really, really confident that they are going to  continue to do a great job and I think that it’s going to explode. The feedback thus fat is amazing. I am so excited.”

Laricchiuta comes from a varied musical background and in fact likes to sing pretty much anything that’s been put to music. Black Rose Maze is definitely within the melodic hard rock genre, perfected by Frontiers Music, but the songs on the album perfectly showcase not only her power as a vocalist but the range of emotions she conveys through her voice, and its dexterity and dynamism.

“People who know me and who have heard me before are going to say, wow, that’s next level hard rock, because there are some songs where I am really screaming and belting it out. And then for the people who don’t know me, it’s not metal, it’s hard rock. But what I really like is the fact that they are going to say, and actually lots are already saying, holy shit, this girl can sing. I think I’ve got this powerful raspy, in-your-face kind of tone which fits so well with the music and the musicians on this album. Everything is just a perfect blend. I feel that my voice and the instrumentation and arrangements of the songs are just bang on,” she explained.

“And of course, it’s melodic. I love melodic rock. Maybe it’s my age but I listened to a lot of melodic rock instead of hard rock and metal or whatever. So, this is perfect for me; it was a real win/win when I heard about Frontiers. I figured I can’t go wrong; I am in a really great situation and I am really happy.”

With such a phenomenal voice, it’s difficult to imagine that Laricchiuta didn’t begin to really explore this latent talent until she was in her late teens and early 20s. And it was all thanks to the sometimes maligned world of karaoke that the world is now able to hear her in all her brilliantly badass vocal glory.

“I wanted to be a cop when I was a teenager, because I am so rough and tough and tomboyish. But the minute I sang in front of an audience, that was it. My family was very musical. My mom and her four siblings, all girls, were always into music. We went to see the Village People, the Jackson Five, then later Gowan and Luba, Barry White, Earth Wind & Fire – they took me to all that stuff. And my parents were also incredible dancers. So, I was always listening to all kinds of music,” she explained.

“But at the same time, some of my aunts were also listening to Pat Benatar and Melissa Etheredge, so I picked up all their records and continued listening to them, and also Def Leppard and Journey – everything that was played on the radio in the 1980s. One night when I was about 19 or 20, I went out to a movie, and after there was a big karaoke bar and it was opening night, and we decided to go in. And that’s where I sang for the first time. From there, the guy who owned the karaoke company tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I wanted to work for him. And that was my start – I was hosting karaoke and being a DJ six nights a week, and I did that for years and years and years. I was pretty popular, because everybody wanted the karaoke chick to come to their club.

“Here I was in my 20s singing every kind of music, a couple hundred songs a week. And that’s how I developed my vocal muscle and my love for music. I sang anything, from Latin to jazz to rock and pop.”

Not long thereafter she got a gig singing at a series of casinos and hotels throughout Asia, including stints in South Korea, Macau, Indonesia, Dubai, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong, before returning home, resuming her karaoke gig as well as beginning to sing in and around the Montreal music scene. Her career got a significant boost when she made it to the finals of the Quebec version of The Voice, called La Voix, for the 2015 season. Her success not only gave her a much larger profile but brought her to the attention of one of the coaches on the show, Eric Lapointe, who took Laricchiuta on tour with him. She soon thereafter signed with Quebec-based S7 Productions and recorded a French album entitled Rosa. Over the Christmas season in 2016, she was hired to perform with the internationally renowned Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a position she has held during the holiday season ever since.

The following year, 2017, she released her first English album, the EP Free. All of this brought her to the attention of Milan, Italy-based Frontiers, and the Black Rose Maze project and album.

“Before this, I was just kind of doing my thing and I wasn’t really categorized as anything. But now I have to keep telling myself that I am a rock singer. Sometimes I need to remember to wear the black eyeliner and the black clothes and live the part of a rock singer, because really, I am a little bit of everything. Honestly, I am just happy to be alive and happy to be able to sing and to love what I am doing and share that with other people,” Laricchiuta said.

“Black Rose Maze is definitely making me become more focused on being a rock singer. Working with the TSO also helped because it’s pretty next level too. When I am there, I am all glammed up with the extra makeup and outfits and stuff and its full on big rock production. When I am not in TSO, I am back to my normal self.”

While Laricchiuta contributed to some of the songwriting, the bulk of the material on this first Black Rose Maze album was composed and produced by Frontiers’ brilliant in-house song maestro Alessandro Del Vecchio along with some of his regular writing partners. What is remarkable about the album is how well he not only captured Laricchiuta’s voice, but also the type of energy and the sorts of messages she wants to impart through her music.

Speaking with Laricchiuta, there is an undeniable energy that exudes forth from her, a personality that is engaging, but also at times, wonderfully big and bombastic. She is passionate, driven, and full of a restlessness that she channels into her creative pursuits, her love of the outdoors … and on the ice as a hockey player, playing in pick-up games in the winter alongside her RCMP husband and his pals.

But there were times in her past when that self-assuredness, that positive outlook was challenged, and she channeled those times and experiences and relationships into her performances on Black Rose Maze, as well as into the songs she herself contribute to on the record, giving it an overriding message of the importance of self-reliance, of being free and true to oneself, for fighting for what you believe and fighting for your place in the world. In essence, it is an album infused with a sense of empowerment and perseverance.

“I had always written in phases, depending on the ups and downs in my life and the current situation in my life. For 80 per cent of my life, I am happy, and I don’t feel I need to write anything. But then when I have some moments where I am looking a little deeper, that’s when it comes out. Fifteen, 20 years ago, I was writing a lot. And then I stopped, and I met my husband and life was just so amazing, so I started writing more in metaphor. I have always been writing, but not as regular as I should. The minute I signed with Frontiers it came back again and I started writing more often because I knew I was working on a full album. For me, I need a purpose; I can’t just sit down and write when there’s no goal,” she said.

“As for an overall message, I didn’t have that in mind, I didn’t even see a theme at the time. I just figured it was a big collaboration and everybody was throwing things into the mix and we were just making an album together. But you are bringing it to my attention. I guess it really is about being a strong person, a strong woman. The songs that I wrote, there is definitely a meaning I wanted to write about, exactly what you said, so thank you for that nice refresher. I wrote four songs on here, two were taken from the Free EP and we reworked them a bit. So, yes, I wrote about me and my experiences and being strong.

“I was in an emotionally abusive relationship back in the day – a few actually. And when I came out of them clean, I wrote about that too. I never wanted to write about it before, so Frontiers opened my eyes in that sense where I thought, you know I need to talk about what happened in my past, because it’s happened to lots of other women. In the Dark is about a relationship and Let Me Be Me is about that too, where I never felt like I was truly myself in a relationship because I was verbally abused. The other song is Free, I mean in just the chorus I am saying I want to be free; I want to be free. Look At Me Now is another one where I was coming free from a bad relationship and I was saying to the world, ‘look at me now. I am strong, I am capable.’”

Laricchiuta still marvels at the way Del Vecchio was able to tune in on her creative wavelength and write both music and lyrics that fit the identity and mandate she wanted to develop for Black Rose Maze.

“I sent him a few examples of songs and genres that I like to listen to. I really like Lizzy Hale and Halestorm a lot, and that’s where I wanted to go with this project. So, I sent him some Halestorm, I sent him a Pink song here and there. I didn’t want it to be pop rock, I wanted it to be deep rock, but I liked Pink’s approach and message. A lot of Lizzy’s stuff is really metal, but the songs of hers I listen to the most are very melodic with great choruses. Alessandro and I went back and forth a few times with his song ideas, some I rejected, some I thought were great and that was it,” she said.

“And he really got to know my voice. He understands what I am looking for. He calls me Thunder Rosa because I am so raw and loud, and that’s exactly why I like working with him. I have already said to him that I would love him to work on my next album and really take it to the next level, since he knows me so well. The thing is people sometimes get intimidated by me. I come across as so strong and self assured, but back in the day, I was not like this. It comes with maturity and I really had to work my way through those bad situations.

“Music is what helped me then and it still helps me now. One hundred per cent, 1,000 per cent, that’s what sets me free, that’s what I crave, to be able to sing and perform. And I love being outdoors and doing things. I need to go out, I need to be out in nature, that’s the creative person, the artist in me. Everybody tells me that I always have so much energy and that I am always in a good mood. This is why I need music and I need to do a lot of sports. But there’s the other side where I meditate and do yoga, and sometimes I need to be alone and I need to slow things down to have balance. It took me a while to learn the balance thing, because I was usually go go go all the time. I do have a lot of energy and that’s what people seem to love about me and it’s all me. What you see is what you get. I can’t be somebody I’m not. And I feel I have a lot to give. I think because I came into this success when I am older, I have more appreciation for it. The thing that has kept me going through everything is resilience. You have to be resilient in this business. And I have so much passion and love for what I do, that will never go away. It’s part of who I am.”

For more information on Laricchiuta and Black Rose Maze, visit www.rosarock.com, or her social media channels.

• Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for nearly 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.

 

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