by Adelie Salagnac
photos by Rohan Ayinde Smith
Thursday, January 21st, 7:00pm: the top performers of last year’s monthly Open Stage Competition, the Philly Rising Showcase, are about to go on stage in Downstairs Live, at World Café Live. Among them is Vessna Scheff, talented and yet down-to-earth singer. A few days after the showcase, she was lovely enough to have a chat with us about this experience and to discuss her various personal projects.
“It was nice to join the competition, for the experience of meeting other performers, and of putting together a performance,” she explains. “I am also glad about the exposure that you get as a musician. It was a lot of fun to play alongside performers that are amazingly talented as well.”
Delivering a touching and stunning performance, Scheff was awarded 3rd place in the competition. Her hard work and dedication had paid off. But that’s not just it. Scheff has been up to a lot of great and exciting stuff. She always keeps herself busy and finds wonderful ways to showcase her diverse talents: painting, playing music, composing… “To being light, bold and full of color,” she ends all of her blog entries with this phrase.
Kind-hearted and willing to help others, she wants to share her skills and knowledge and to touch people’s lives. This is why she decided to also offer drawing, painting and voice lessons, through her website.
“I love teaching and I love the experience of learning, so I am happy to be part of anybody’s experience of learning,” she says.
Best advice she could give to anyone wanting to make a career out of music? “Just keep doing it. There are a lot of reasons not to, but then there are also a lot of reasons to keep doing it. Just remember that.” And Scheff is the first one trying to live by this. “I would love to be able to support myself playing music. I’m working really hard towards that goal.”
Some of you might also know Scheff as ½ of the collab Salt&Sage, with David Colon. Some things are just meant to be: the two randomly met in San Francisco, at an open mic competition, and somehow just really clicked. They never stopped making music together ever since that day.
Now that she is based in Philly, living on opposite sides of the country makes it more of a challenge, but she guarantees that this is not the end of Salt&Sage, and she is really looking forward to play shows with David Colon again. As for her solo career, there is also a lot of gigging involved.
“I am going to play again on February 10th at the Fire, and then hopefully at some point I am going to record a new EP. I also play at Luna Café every other Sunday. It is really nice to have a regular location, to see people and be part of a community, doing music. Those are always pretty fun shows.”
Visit http://www.vessnascheff.com/ to keep up with her latest work and have a listen to her EP, Echoes: “It’s a recording from a charity show. It was a lot of fun, it turned out great and the recording was really nice so I just put it on my website.”
