Born in Romania in 1988, to two artistic parents, I studied classical piano performance in a specialised College of the Arts, in Iasi. During this time I participated and won prizes as a classical pianist but also as a music theory olympian in national competitions.
In 2006, I moved to Los Angeles and explored other musical avenues such as improvisation and composition, at the Santa Monica College. In LA, I collaborated with film composer Adam Barber (singing on his album Quiet City), and collaborated with visual artists Channa Horwitz, Ruah Edelstein, and Rasika Ruwapanthirana.
Channa Horwitz composed several visual matrixes that were destined to be interpreted musically, and I made my own interpretation of Channa’s matrix Sonakinatography 3, as a minimalist piano piece. Due to the minimal and accesible style of this piano composition, my piece was later used as inspiration and soundtrack for a new dance performance, and the show was presented at the Annenberg Beach House in January 2012, and other performance spaces throughout the world in Channa Horwitz exhibitions thereafter.
As a music composer, I wrote a cello and piano piece premiered at the Broad Stage in 2010, as well as a choral madrigal also premiered at the Broad Stage in 2011.
In 2012 I relocated back to Europe, ending up in London UK. London offered further opportunities. I have been collaborating with the Modulus Quartet as a string quartet composer since 2016. I wrote a 3 part piece named Rituals, due to be recorded by Modulus on their future album.
As a session musician, I recorded the piano on Charlie Cawood’s album Blurring into Motion (progressive rock musician, composer and multi instrumentalist), and have been a guest singer for the Emmy-nominated band the Mediaeval Baebes, contributing on two of their recent albums.While in London, I also collaborated musically with visual artist and punk legend Jowe Head of TV personalities band.
Aside from musical projects, I also wrote and self-published my own original oracle set based on love-related quotes, for which I also wrote a soundtrack available on Bandcamp. Strange Secret Sacred Love Cards have sold in London, in a limited edition format.
Ever since the pandemic, I am based between Bucharest, Romania and London, UK.
During the summer 2020, I was selected to participate in the Electric Castle Summer Camp 2020 in Tuzla, alongside other Romanian artists, as well as The EC Camp of 2022, which culminated with a performance at Electric Castle Festival 2023, as part of Electro Affair. Collaborations included Taku Takahashi, Herodot, Cesar Merveille, Cosmin TRG, and others. As a result of this meetings, I also recorded vocals for Taku’s composition, a film soundtrack for Shokuzai.
At EC camp I also met Alex Stingu of Baby Elvis, with whom we formed the indie pop band called Cat Mercury, and released our first single on YouTube, Rainbow of Chaos.
My releases so far include a Bandcamp piano improvisation album called Lullabies for the New Normal, a a minimalist Romanian Christmas album made of a capella arrangements, known as Romanian Carols of Old New, which have also been reharmonised for voice and string quartet.
After the completion of my Masters in production and songwriting, I launched Pandora Jodara as a new alter ego, for my producer/songwriter project, and released two fully self-produced singles, Power Hungry, and Dear Child…
….More to follow!