Just weeks after opening for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, to a crowd of 90,000 at a sold-out Wembley Stadium in London, Sofia Isella is hitting the road on her first-ever headline tour with her first stop at the Catalyst in downtown Santa Cruz.
A prolific young singer/songwriter, ISELLA (who spells her name in all caps for artistic purposes) is a classically trained violinist, poet and self-proclaimed “slut for words.” ISELLA enjoys the contrast between her experience on stage in a sold-out arena and playing in much smaller and more intimate venues like the Catalyst.
“Both are great in their way. Wembley feels like an explosion of WOW! The small venues feel like home, where everyone can see you breathe and count the hairs on your head,” ISELLA says.
While playing in front of 90,000 people is huge, ISELLA’s biggest moment at Wembley wasn’t when she was playing but rather during the soundcheck, looking out at the empty coliseum, seeing the sheer size of it, and testing her mic.
“Soundcheck was the biggest moment for me. When I’m on stage I’m not processing anything, I’m just doing it and running on the heat of it. Soundcheck is when I can look around, and it was one of the biggest feelings of my life.”
Having practiced four to five hours a day since the age of three, ISELLA is an expert violinist with a background in Scottish fiddle music. However, her interest in and subsequent production of pop music didn’t come until she was 13, when she first began listening to it.
As a poet, ISELLA takes influences from prolific female poets like Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. As a musician, she has a background as a classically trained violinist and a love of ’90s alternative rock, mixing the two in a unique style. “Hot Gum,” an electrifying mix of indie pop and spoken verse that got more than 10 million streams on Spotify, began first as a beat to which she later added her poetry.
“Either I start with words, like poetry, and then add it later on into a production I made (or co-made) that I love, or start with production first, then find sentences in my notebook from past free writes. ‘Hot Gum’ started with a beat, and I just hummed a rhythm on top of it,” the songwriter says.
If she had any advice for up-and-coming musicians, it would be “Get offline, stop scrolling, save yourself!”
Her move from Wembley to a headlining tour across her home state of California begins Sept. 7 at 8pm at the Catalyst. It is a 16+ show, and doors open at 7pm. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door.
