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Anna Carvalho Loves Monsters

Anna Carvalho Front Page PhotoAnna Carvalho loves vampires and monsters, she was cast as a demon, but instead became an angel, she has been a prostitute more than once, on film! She was in a monster tale.  Those things are not nearly as intimidating as when we briefly summarize her career CV for you. Anna Carvalho is an accomplished screenwriter, a good actress, director, producer and model. Born in Portugal, now making her home in Austin, Texas, she is one of those rare jewels you find in any walk of life, incredibly talented, always with a smile on her face and laughter punctuating her conversation, she has this knack of making one feel like she is someone you have known for years, rather than someone you are beginning your first conversation with.  

Seeming to have several projects on the go all at once, we decided to ask her about two of them.

“One of them is a series that we started in 2023 and it is a horror series. It is (comprised of) Portuguese tales that were in a book that was launched in 2023. At that time, we realized in Portugal there were not a lot of women working in horror. In Portugal horror is stigmatized a little bit. One of the women (working in horror) was me. I was the producer and director. My collaborators are Isabel Pina and Sandra Henriques.

We thought let’s adapt some of these tales and create the monster, kind of based on Frankenstein. It was working all of these tales and finding out what they have in common,” she says and nodding yes when we ask, “You were in the play about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, correct.”

Continuing Anna Carvalho says, “Frankenstein is something I always wanted to do. I love monsters, vampires and all of these types of things (You are scaring us!). I thought it was really interesting, because I love that kind of story. Being a part of the play, I got the part, so it was fascinating for me. It was like candy for me, like a kid (she has a big smile) woo hoo! Read More

 

Alexandra Dean and the Judds

Alexandra Dean 2025 Interview Front Page PhotoThe Judd Family: Truth Be Told is a documentary series, directed by award winning film director Alexandra Dean, born in Hampstead England and who fashioned her career in the United States. She has gained a reputation for at times taking on hard stories to tell and sometimes of people who were misunderstood or their accomplishments were understated. She has however been at the forefront of often telling the stories of women who helped shape our world, who far too often became the fodder for a bloodthirsty media whose appetite for sensationalism far outweighed their desire for fairness and reasonableness. Do you know that Hedy Lamarr, a beautiful actress was instrumental in pioneering the technology that launched the widespread use of cellphones and just about anything else that relied on what became Wi-Fi technology as well as redesigned the shape of the wings of planes. She took us behind the scenes with the women who once lived at the Playboy mansion and their difficult and heartbreaking stories. Alexandra Dean spent almost a year as the travel companion of Paris Hilton, while filming that documentary and now she takes us inside the Judd Family, the late Naomi, actress Ashely and singer / songwriter Wynonna. We would like to tell you this is a fairytale with an appropriate ending, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, because this is a very tragic story, but hopefully one that begins the long road to healing for those involved.

Alexandra Dean begins, “It (the documentary) was put together by Propagate Production Company and they made a deal with the estate. Then I went out to both daughters, Wynonna and Ashley. I asked them if they wanted to participate. Ashley wanted to participate, but she wanted to meet me and talk to me. We had a long conversation, before we decided to go forward. With Wynonna it took a while and she came onboard about halfway through the filming.” Read More

 

Electronic Firefly

Electronic Firefly cello 

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Ágota Dunai - Actor Interview

Agota Dunai Interview Front Page PhotoWhile she has moved around a bit, actress Ágota Dunai now calls Budapest home, in her native country Hungary. You may have seen her in the high altitude action thriller Fight and Flight starring Josh Hartnett, the second time she has worked with him and Katee Sackhoff or perhaps in the film Dr Jason II Lights and Shades, streaming on Amazon (in some countries) and soon you will be able to see her in a Tom Cruise movie (at press time still to be titled). With three films either released or in production during 2025 and two more from 2024, Ágota Dunai’s career is gathering momentum and so it should for this talented young actor. 

In the film Fight and Flight, Ágota Dunai says, “I played a flight attendant. I had flight attendant experience before in another film, and they chose me,” Although she had a minor role in the film she says, “I really hope it made it to the film. I haven’t seen the film yet. There was one scene when the plane starts to crash and there is a lot of shaking and someone falls down. Then I go to the (person) and help him up. I ask if he is okay and ask if he needs medical help. That was my speaking scene, but in many other scenes I was packing, sorting and helping with seatbelts. Also, when there were fight scenes, I was trying to protect the other passengers. There is one scene when somebody gets cut with a chainsaw and there is fake blood scattered on me. There are a lot of action scenes.

I (also) worked with Josh Hartnett in The Fear Index. It was nice to work with him again.”

With impeccable English, proficient in German and of course her Read More 

Lucy Gale - It's Never Too Late

Lucy Gale Interview Photo Front PageOn May 24 th in Australia at the JazzLab a sold-out audience gave singer, songwriter, Lucy Gale a standing ovation as her album  It’s Never Too Late made it’s debut. This collection of songs  plays to Gale’s soulful, bluesy vocals and for the recorded album, helmed by producer, composer and keyboardist Dominic Ross, she surrounded herself with some superb musicians, drummer Darryn Farrugia, bassist David Rosa, organist Harry Mullany (who also contributed vocal harmonies) and guitarist Dragan Stanic. They were complimented by saxophonist Gary Deleo, percussionists Alejandro Vega and Sam Oliveri, as well as guitarists Eddie De Marchi and Ben Dewhirst. Adam Calaitzis served as the sound engineer and mastered the record at Toyland Studios.  

Songs like “It’s Never Too Late,” seek to rekindle how love first felt or perhaps get back a love lost, and the  breathtakingly beautiful “Turn Up That Love Song,” remind us of how we felt or may still feel when we are so in love with another that those emotions and feelings burn within us. This latter song should be in a scene for a movie or series, so pay attention music supervisors. The song is beautifully sung, arranged and orchestrated. Rather than overpowering the singer, as so many instrumentalists sometimes do, the musicians compliment Lucy Gale in a way that if you close your eyes, you imagine them dancing slowly together or perhaps, Read More

Paul Rappaport - Behind the Curtain

Paul Rappaport Interview Photo Front Page by Mark SeligerFor thirty-three years Paul Rappaport promoted music icons and in the process he became an icon on the business side of music.  He started working for Columbia Records,  when he was in university and worked his way up through the ranks to eventually become Senior Vice-President of Rock Promotion. In April he will release his autobiography, Gliders Over Hollywood Airships, Airplay and the Art of Rock Promotion. Paul Rapport left Columbia Records in the early 2000s, but what is astounding about that is not how much time has passed in between then and his April release of the book (pre-order links at the bottom of this interview), but the clarity of his memory in terms of his personal memories and the events, circumstances and relationships that he experienced in the music business. The chapters of this book are not merely vague and scattered memories but rather play out like a streaming or television series where we are introduced to the colorful, creative and interesting artists and colleagues of Paul Rappaport.  

“That is what I was trying to do. This was a very magical time, and I wanted to share these stories and for the readers to have fun, like I had fun. I wanted them to have the experience that I had. Somehow, I was (blessed) with a photographic memory, because as you know from reading this book, Read More

 

 

Paula Parducz - Actress

Paula Parducz Photo front pageThis seems like a good place to begin when talking about film and theater actor Paula Parducz, her stage name and you will understand why we clarified that in a few moments. She was born in the state of Kansas (United States), grew up in Costa Rica, lived in the London (U.K.) for five years, lived part of her adult life in Asturias, Spain and now is her eighth year living in Budapest, Hungary. Now you understand.  

She is cerebral, talented, at home in comedy or dramatic productions, but leans more to drama as a preference, which we will explain in a bit and she shared some insight to that side of her acting while discussing the role she played in the theater production Beauty, directed by Carna Krsul.

“My favorite role is Annabel in Beauty. I liked it because it allowed me to (get into) a vulnerability that I really had not explored before, because in a way it touched a part that I really had not dug into (previously).

She (Annabel) stepped out of her own shell. She is afraid of going out (Annabel is agoraphobic), but she is masking that by looking young and  pretty. It was very powerful on stage and it was always interesting to feel the reaction of the people when they could see the mask dropping,” she says.

We wondered about the dynamic of an actor performing in front of an audience and in the role of a character who had difficulty with mixing with others and certainly Annabel would never have performed Read More

Jesse and Noah Leave Love Alone

Jesse and Noah Photo 2024 front pageJesse and Noah Bellamy who perform and record simply and Jesse and Noah, visited with Riveting Riffs Magazine recently to talk about their new EP Leave Love Alone, which derives its name from the titular song and to ring in the holiday season with two Christmas songs, one a cover tune and the other an original.  

We jokingly asked them about the song “Leave Love Alone,” and if it was a reference to a relationship that went sideways.

Jesse replied, “That is an older song, so I don’t even remember. I started that song with Simon Bruce, an Australian singer and songwriter who lived here in Nashville for a while. We halfway finished it and he and Daniel Tashian finished it and then it came back to me. Daniel was going to put it out and then I didn’t hear anything for a while and so I thought I would just throw it into this mix of songs that we were doing for our next session. We thought we could do a pretty good job on it. We recorded it, got it ready to go and he ended up putting his out around the same time or maybe a couple of weeks before or something like that.

He released it mostly in Australia. I guess it is worldwide, because of streaming.

The songs ended up being so different and with different audiences, so they didn’t really clash.”

Produced by Pino Squillace, engineered by Brandon Henegar and recorded at the House Of David Studios in Nashville the song is a Country song, with Rock influences and excellent musicianship. Those who have followed Jesse and Noah over the years, should not be Read More

 

 

 

Macartney Reinhardt Says "Hey Girl"

Macartney Reinhardt Interview Photo Front PageMacartney Reinhardt is four years into her Country music career, but here is the thing, she is still only eighteen years old. She grew up in a small town forty-five minutes from Atlanta, Georgia, before moving with her parents to Nashville when she was fifteen, after travelling back and forth between Georgia and Nashville for a year. Spending a week in a hotel each trip gets expensive. Now if venues want to book her for gigs as she says, “I wouldn’t have to say I am in Georgia, sorry I can’t do it.”

She continues, “We moved so I could be in the midst of the music scene here.

“It was hard, because I was still in school Then I went to virtual (school) the last two years of high school. That was the main adjustment. It wasn’t bad getting adjusted to living in a different state, because we had been here so much, and we had stayed in hotels for a week every month. That wasn’t very hard for me. It was harder for me not going to public school and just sitting at home and doing school. That is when I started playing out multiple times per week.”

Now Nashville feels like home and as a nod to the city, Macartney Reinhardt co-wrote the song “Coming Home,” Read More  

 

Peter Holsapple - Face of 68

Peter Holsapple Interview 2025 Photo Front PagePeter Holsapple’s new album The Face of 68 serves as an unintentional mentorship for songwriter / musicians closer to the beginning of their careers.  

Peter Holsapple says, “I am extremely proud of the new record. The songs that make up The Face of 68 are largely songs that were written after the release of Game Day, my last solo record in 2018. What happened was my friend Carlo Nuccio from Continental Drifters passed away from cancer in 2022 and I don’t grieve very cleanly, so I wrote a song. Actually, I wrote a couple of songs, but the song “Larger Than Life,” that I wrote and cut, felt good. I thought it had been a few years, maybe the statue of limitations had been lifted and it would be okay for me to do another record.

I had a folder with about fifteen or sixteen songs and I thought maybe there is something in here. Then I got Don Dixon (producer) on the case and I wanted to do it different than Game Day. Game Day was all me and that was fine and I don’t have to do that again. I wanted to do it with this rhythm section and I got a crack team, Rob Ladd (drums) and Robert Sledge (bass) and made it a very tangible record. We could feel it coming out of the speakers, at least if you play it loud enough, which I do.

I suddenly had a bunch of songs and I had a studio (Overdub Lane) six minutes from my house. I had a producer in Don Dixon whom I dearly love and have loved for a million years. I had a great engineer whom I had worked with Jason Richmond. He had done the engineering for The Paranoid Style stuff, the band that I play guitar with these days. It all came together and pardon the pun, but we did it in record time. Read More 

 Secret Monkey Weekend

Secret Monkey Weekend Photo Front PageWhat do you get when you take an old Tiger Beat magazine, combine it with a woman in a kitchen smashing candy with a hammer and a North Carolina family of four, three of whom are in a band together? You get Secret Monkey Weekend and their album and title song, Lemon Drop Hammer. The trio is comprised of bass player Ella Brown-Hart, her teenage sister Lila and their stepfather Jefferson Hart who in turn asked R.E.M. and Smithereens’ producer Don Dixon to produce their second album. 

Jefferson explains, “Secret Monkey Weekend were the actual words from a 1967 Tiger Beat magazine. A friend of the family gave us some old magazines and Tiger Beat happened to be some of them. At the time we were playing here in the living room and I kept looking at this and I thought it might be a good band name. We quit looking and that (became) the band name.

As for Lemon Drop Hammer, my wife Laura was in the kitchen and she was making a banging sound. I was probably watching a ball game. I went in there to see what was going on (brave man!) and to see if I could help. She had a hammer and she was banging on a bunch of lemon drops, because they had melted and got sticky. She was breaking them up.

We had the album name, before we even had a song. (The song) “Lemon Drop Hammer,” was the last song to be written, during the week we went into the studio.” 

Ella adds about the song, “We had to force it into existence.” Read More

 Actor Ruben Yuste

Ruben Yuste May 2024

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Wine and Jazz Adventures

Mindi Abair 2025 Interview Front PageAre you looking to take a trip of a lifetime, perhaps something with elegance and maybe combining two of your passions, good wine and good music, in a place you have never been before, while rubbing shoulders with a superstar musician and her extraordinary wine connoisseur? We have something in mind that may just be what you are looking for, Wine and Jazz Adventures with Jazz saxophonist Mindi Abair and her husband Eric Guerra. If you are hesitating a bit on the word Jazz, I will let you in a secret, somewhere along the line in the eighteen years or so that Mindi Abair has been a friend to Riveting Riffs Magazine, we remember her once describing to us, at least at that time, that her music was Stadium Jazz. She can play elegantly and quietly and she has rocked out touring with Aerosmith and Duran Duran during the early part of her career, plus she can play anything in between those two styles. As for wine, not only have Mindi and Eric developed their own brand of wine, but with Eric Guerra’s connections and stature they have connected with some of the world’s most famous wineries and they are inviting you along for the experience.  

Mindi Abair sat down with us one afternoon recently to chat, “At the very end of 2019 my husband and I kind of had this ah ha moment. We came together and said we both have dream jobs. I get to go off with my band and travel the world and to make records. For all of all his life Eric has run really amazing wineries, so he would go off to Kendall-Jackson or he would run Mountain Napa (winery). We both had amazing jobs, but we said let’s get out the whiteboard, the marker and a bottle of wine and see if we are truly living our best lives. It may sound trite. We wrote down what was really important to us and what we loved to do. We wanted to be together and we wanted to share his passion for wine with everyone, with people, instead of corporations. For me I wanted to expand my world in music to places outside of the U.S. more and play with different artists, explore and expand. We came up with a company that was the best of both of us. Obviously, he is the wine and I’m the Jazz.

We don’t have to be anything we are not, but obviously the combination of wine and Jazz is pretty spectacular. Eric and I have been together about fourteen years now. It is awesome to fall in love with someone, but it is even more awesome when what he does for a living completely compliments what I do for a living.”

So, when did this all start?

“We started our little company at the end of 2019, with the idea being we would make eight wines each year. He hires winemakers like I hire musicians, because he knows everyone. You and I as civilians can’t do something like that, but he can and that is his world. He hires winemakers to make great wine for us. We get to brand it all and come up with the artwork. All of the artwork and labels are music centric. Then I get to come in and pair all of it with music. Every wine that we make has a playlist that I pair with the style of the wine. We had so much fun coming up with this and then 2020 hit. At the beginning of 2020 the pandemic hit and I guess we started our business at the wrong time, didn’t we?

Sometimes these things work out. I know most of my friends started drinking like there was no tomorrow. People ate and drank like oh my gosh. Why? Where are we going? Our little wine company took off. Of course, the next incarnation Read More

Electronic Firefly From Spain

Electronic Firefly 2024 Interview Photo Front PageThis story begins in Spain during the year 2017, when violinist Silvia Carbajal Sanchez was asked to organize ten musicians and to be the artistic director for a big New Year’s event in 2017.   

Silvia explains what happened next, “That was not when I met Charlie (Perez-Íñigo now her husband). I needed an electric cello for the project and another person recommended that I call him.

It was a difficult time in my life and Charlie became my friend and he helped me in many aspects of my life. At the time I was living in a small village called Villarejo (located in La Rioja, Spain) and he started to visit me often.

He also recommended me for a show called “Music Has No Limits,” and that is when we started to work together. We toured with them, and we started our relationship. We have been together ever since. It was after we left “Music Has No Limits,” that we started Electronic Firefly.”

In 2023 their daughter was born and for two performing musicians that has brought its own challenges, but more on that later.

The two world class musicians have also expanded their music careers and in addition to performing sometimes as a duo and other times for solo gigs, they now  

The two world class musicians have also expanded their music careers and in addition to performing sometimes as a duo and other times for solo gigs, they now also are DJs.  

Charlie takes us down the DJ pathway, and how it began, “We like playing our instruments with electronic music, so we managed to mix some DJ music with the instruments. We would play a song and then mix some things.”

Silvia picks up the conversation, “We make a DJ session and between the session we will greet the guests at the hotel, because we usually work at hotels, bars or restaurants. Sometimes we will play (our instruments).”

Charlie adds, “Then we return to the DJ table and mix. It is a very creative activity, because you will never make the same session twice. It is impossible.”

At the same time, they both tell us that there is a lot of improvisation that takes place.

Being a neophyte to the world of DJ music, our appetites for more information, wanting them to pull back the curtain to reveal what goes into being a DJ, just continued Read More

 

 

Noah Vonne - Heart Of It

Noah Vonne Interview Front Page PhotoNoah Vonne a native of Texas, who has called Nashville and Los Angeles home was our guest recently at Riveting Riffs Magazine and the reason we were excited about her joining us is her vocals remind us of a mix of Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse, and Taylor Dayne, not that she sounds like a clone of those singers, because she does not. We use those comparisons, because Noah Vonne’s vocals are powerful, soulful, and emotive and at a standard that already reflects the vocal abilities of those three artists. She is a splendid songwriter who can accompany herself on the guitar or keyboards and she has a knack for knowing what works best with her music videos.  

Most of her childhood and teenage years were spent growing up in New Braunfels nestled between Austin Texas and San Antonio, in a family with five older sisters. All of them were softball players, almost enough to form their own team.

When asked if she was spoiled, being the baby of the family, she says while laughing, “ It is true. All of my sisters would say one thousand percent. In comparison to some of my friends, maybe not so, because my parents were pretty strict for the most part. Compared to my sisters I was very spoiled.”

She was the trailblazer in her family as far as someone having artistic leanings and says, “What I was going after was very different.”

A familiar story for many great singers, Noah Vonne’s journey began as a child singing in a large church in San Antonio, the Community Bible Church with by her estimates 2,000 people attending for services.  

It was beautiful and the music program was really, really strong. One of the choir leaders was also my voice lessons and piano teacher in senior high school.

We drove from New Braunfels to San Antonio. It wasn’t too bad, because New Braunfels is wedged between Austin and San Antonio and just barely closer to San Antonio. It was like a thirty-minute drive. In Texas time that is not much.”

As for the first time that she recalls singing in front of other people, “When I was really, really little I remember singing “King of the Road,” by Roger Miller at karaoke with my dad when I was five or six. You know that song. It is a classic. It is one of the best. Read More 

 

 

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Camilla Roman's New RomCom

Camilla Roman Fortysomething Interview Photo OnCamilla Roman, the Norwegian actress, screenwriter, director and producer is back with another fabulous short film and one that is very relatable to anyone who has used social media and also one that is very funny. The film Fortysomething, centers about ex-spouses, social media mistakes by Torbjorn and that implicate his wife (Susanne) and her mother Britt-Eva and develop into a big misunderstanding with Torbjorn inadvertently inviting Susanne and her mother to his wedding to Vanessa, which is to take place in Tuscany, Italy.  

The film was inspired by a real-life situation experienced by one of Camilla Roman’s friends and the mishaps and misunderstandings that can happen on social media platforms.

Camilla Roman explains, “This is based on a true story and what sort of happened to one of my friends, the character that I play. When her ex-husband was going to get married there was a lot of confusion and stuff on Facebook with invitations. He invited her and her mom and that was a mistake. He deleted them and deleted whole events and people were what? Is it canceled? All of that happened and then there is a lot of fiction into the mix (in the film).

After she told me this story, I wrote it down a little bit. I thought maybe I can do this for something later. I took a year of filmmaking. I got into the final year and so I got my Bachelor (degree) in one year. I had to make a film (for my degree). I didn’t know what I was going to write. There were ten people in the class and my teacher said if some of you still don’t know what you are going to write and what your film is going to be about, now is the time to make a decision. You can’t just sit around and hope for an idea to pop into your head, which is exactly what I was doing (she laughs).  

I thought I have some notes somewhere, let me go and find my notes and I had this. I wasn’t thinking of writing a Romantic Comedy. I just started writing the script and using my notes and then I had a meeting with my screenwriting teacher. I said to him oh my god, I am writing a Romantic Comedy.”

As short films go, this one could more properly be referred to as a longer short film, at twenty minutes in length. Without providing any spoilers, it is fair to say that Fortysomething leaves you wanting more. That is to say, those watching the film are left asking, what happens next?  

“It wasn’t deliberate, but I had people come up to me after the screening. I had a private screening and people said to me they want to watch more. They want to see what happens next. I sent this to a producer and I had a meeting with him. He is maybe interested in pursuing this as a feature, but we decided to go on and do another project that I had already started to develop. There might be a feature or Read More
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