From the world’s longest lockdown capital in Melbourne, Australia, did this single mum of three children just write and produce the world’s catchiest new Christmas song of the last decade? Not since the famous Christmas scene in the movie Love Actually, has a Christmas song moved us emotionally like this, and in a way that people are feeling right now right across the world.
Australian entertainer, songwriter, jingle writer, director and producer, ‘Miss Chess’, began working on Orchestral Pop/Swing music more than ten years ago when she was in the middle of her IVF process. After years of a difficult IVF journey, she was finally blessed with twin girls, so to give them the effort they deserved she put her entertainment and media career on hold in exchange for full time motherhood, and ‘Life’ simply got in the path of her music making.
The divine inspiration for this Christmas composition came during the longest lockdown that any country has experienced (in ‘Lockdown Capital’, Melbourne, Australia where the State now has zero cases and zero deaths for over one month), when one of her little twin girls was suffering an emotional meltdown from the lockdown and sobbed to her saying, “Oh Mummy, it’s too hard not being able to see our friends or go anywhere! This year we all need more Christmas than ever!”
Chess says, “My heart hurt so much for her. But it made so much sense! And it mirrored what so many other people were feeling and saying to me. I felt it was time to write my Christmas song and produce it as a gift to my little girl, and to everyone else across the world who feels that way right now … and a ‘Happy Jolly Very Extra Merry Christmas’ was born!”
Chess began working the charts and the tracks with her good friend and talented guitarist, Mark Domoney, via ‘COVID-safe’ distant video work sessions, and then finally, with the lockdown lifted, access to a commercial recording studio was possible again. She called long time friend and associate, Adam Cal at Toyland Studios, and booked out a week of studio production time.
Although it was way too close to Christmas, working against the clock with a crazily tight pre-Christmas distribution deadline, Chess quickly invited an incredibly versatile and talented group of show business friends to join her to sing on her composition.
With tight distribution deadlines to Christmas the initial launch is immediately available on the independent artist portal – bandcamp.com – whilst Chess also awaits a last-minute scheduled release to the mainstream distribution channels to be activated through CDBaby Distribution.
The friends ‘cast’ includes Frank Bennett (four-time ARIA nominee), Dunja Larova (award-winning British/Russian violinist), Tim Watson (a founding member of ARIA award-winning band Taxiride), Isabella Dunwill (actor and voice of Amy in Bananas In Pyjamas and Polvina in The Sea Princesses), Sarah C (R&B Soul singer/songwriter), George Kapiniaris (Actor/Musician, and also Australia’s beloved Memo from ‘Acropolis Now’), Maya Weiss (Singer/songwriter, also in the Top 25 on The Voice 2013), Kamahi Djordon King (Aboriginal Australia’s Cabaret Performing Artist) and his female alter ego ‘Constantina Bush’ (Australia’s Premier Indigenous Showgirl), and The Australian Children’s Choir (with Daniel Brinsmead, ACC Artistic Director).
You can listen here www.misschess.bandcamp.com
