Photo credit: Nate Hill
The name Simon means ‘he has heard’ and in the case of Julian Simonsz it’s a case of he has been heard.
Our first glimpse of Julian was on this year’s ‘The Voice’ the culmination of four years of taking singing seriously. We were captivated by his voice and also by the story of the wonderful romance between he and his wife Nelu. Their story is one that the magic of Hollywood loves, meeting at 2 years of age when their families settled in Australia, their families looked out for each other. Over time the two youngsters lost contact to be reunited again about 17 years later. Romance and marriage followed.
Julian’s new song ‘I did it for you’ was originally written for Nelu, and is a song about appreciating the women in our lives who may often be taken for granted and also about celebrating life.
Julian, before he was a singer, worked in the technical aspects of music, with a bachelor of Audio Production from a South Australian Institute. The fact Julian knows the business from this view point and is competent on the engineering side of things helps his musical and vocal work as well. If being in involved in both the technical side of the music industry and being performer/songwriter has any drawback it’s that having an engineering background can sometimes make one fall “into the trap” of attempting to bring technical perfection to song writing which often doesn’t work as writing is a more emotional process but Julian has managed to avoid this trap.
Of his experience on ‘The Voice’, Julian says it was easier with the judges ‘not facing you’ and that being on ‘The Voice’ gave him, as well as a surreal experience, “a great platform and great exposure to kick start his career” and see him “doing corporate gigs”.
Although Julian hasn’t been to Tassie yet, planning a national tour he would love to include us.
It was a dream come true when on Oct 16 Julian performed his first gig with a band at the Northcote social club in Melbourne.
You can learn more about Julian and his music here http://juliansimonsz.com/
Paula Xiberras
