Anaïs Rachel Lund a third semester Mesa student on her way to a music major focusing on vocals with aspiration to make it in Berklee College of Music, she does vocals for an impromptu jazz quintet at Mesa College. Anaïs’s voice is a refreshing reminder that jazz is still  beautiful today as it was when Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae used to sing.

Q: Where are you from Anaïs?

A: From San Diego, California, born and raised. Nothing too crazy. I went to Coronado School of The Arts. I did musical theater there. They had a music department there but they focused more on the instrumentals and that’s why I did musical theater, to get that voice training.

Q: What Instruments do you play?

A: I play the guitar, the ukulele and a shitty piano, like it’s just basically to pluck stuff out now, I used to really like to playing the piano, I would watch the youtube videos that showed said “the lights are here, put your hands here.”

Q: How long have you studied at Mesa? Were you part of the music program from your first semester?

A: I’m in my third semester here, I actually went to City first. I thought they had a good program since they had the jazz station over there.  I was like ‘hell yeah, let me jazz it up over there,’ but then there was nothing there and the jazz station was very closed off, so then I was like ‘alright, I gotta go somewhere else,’ so I came to Mesa where we have a flourishing music program, and I’ve been in the program since I’ve gotten here.

Q: What’s your major?

A: I’m a music major focusing in voice. Here they train classical for voice. I want to do more jazz, we will see how that works next semester with the Applied Music Program(AMP). Classical is important though, it’s the foundation but I prefer doing jazz and soul, because classical just sounds classical. I would like to transfer to SDSU but if I had all the money I would like to go to Berklee College of Music and study jazz.

Q: How long have you done vocals?

A:Well I started taking lessons since I was eight, but I would sing all the time, not that it was good, and I remember on the way to school the bus driver had Z90.3 FM  and at the time it wasn’t just rap but also R&B, and I never really stopped progressing.

Q: Why jazz? And who are your vocal influences?

A: We played it in the house since I was little, my mom loved bossa nova. When I was little I had this baby boombox with Frank Sinatra and they would just leave it in my crib. I feel that’s something that just feels cozy, like a warm blanket, something comfortable. Actually when I write music it sounds more like indie and that’s okay; it’s just the way it comes out. But when I’m doing covers, I’m working with David Sullivan and Deejay Rich. We are working on making a jazz quintet right now, we want to do some gigs. But the funny part was I met Deejay during auditions and he said, “Hey I’m a jazz guitarist” and I was like, “Sweet! Let’s make some music and make some money, I’m broke.” And so we thought of three song we could go over to see how it goes and David comes in, asks us what if he can listen, I told him “you don’t have to watch, you can join, man.” We start playing and it sounds good. Then we said we needed a bass player. Two minutes later, Eriq Dobko knocks on the there saying “Hey guys, you guys need a bassist?” we were all “ hell yeah!” We have only been working together for about a month now, and we are setting up a set list.

Q: If you could sing for anyone who would it be and why?

A: Amy Winehouse would be super cool if she wasn’t dead. I would like to talk to her and say “ everything is okay, I get you have that sad, sassy music but its okay, don’t do drugs. Let’s go to a bar or something.” Also The Beatles. I’m a Beatles nerd; I saw Paul McCartney when he came last December and he was cutest little man.  Then Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole if they came together… Louis Armstrong if he wants to come.