Clara Bellino: Press

Embarcadero Love - CD
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"It's hard to rock a boat that's already rocking on the choppy waters of San Francisco Bay, but the ebullient singer Clara Bellino makes the trip on the Alameda-S.F. ferry a little bouncier each month with a Friday evening concert for the commuters."

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Chet Helms, Summer of Love architect, honored at Fort Mason

Thursday, December 1, 2005


Toys for Tots Concert to Feature French Alamedan

By Johyné Taylor Hill
-photo (c) Chet Helms-

The Speiskammer Restaurant will welcome the season of giving by hosting the Toys for Tots Benefit concert Thursday, Dec. 8, at 8 p.m. The concert, which will feature Alameda musicians, is expected to take on a laidback, acoustic feel.

One of the performers, Clara Bellino, is a French-born singer who claims the United States, and more specifically the Bay Area, as her second home. She recently released a CD entitled Embarcadero Love, which she recorded while living on a boat at the Embarcadero Cove in Oakland. Now an Alameda resident, Bellino brings a lifetime of diverse experiences to her music.

Bellino lived in France until age 5, when she moved to the United States. After a year on the West Coast and a year on the East Coast, the Bellino family moved to the French Alps where they lived in a tiny village of just 30 people, situated about five miles north of Albertville.

After returning to France, Bellino’s parents asked her and her brother what they wanted to do with their time. Bellino wanted to play piano. She enrolled in the French National Conservatory, which focused on traditional, disciplined musicianship. Students were required to develop a firm musical foundation in theory and history before they were allowed to practice their chosen instruments. Bellino said she thrived in the rigorous environment.

“ I loved being in music school and studying it all,” she said. “I loved my daily practice on the piano. I would sit at the piano for hours playing Bach and Debussy. Sometimes I practiced up to eight hours a day.”

She practiced so much, in fact, that her parents made her stop one year because it was disrupting her brother’s studies. However, they soon let her continue.

All in all, she studied the piano for ten years, she said. She also studied the classical guitar for five years. Her musical studies were rounded out by a variety of music played at home. She was exposed to music by Johnny Cash, Frank Zappa, the Beatles, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, among others.

“ It was the one thing when everything else failed that I could do that would get me through. I knew I loved playing music. If I didn’t love it, I would have stopped a long time ago,” said Bellino.

She moved to the Bay Area when she turned 17, this time without her family. She quickly settled into San Francisco, her first big city. Bellino played with several groups, including a reggae band for which she taught herself to play the drums, before creating her own band when she was 19. She has since played in several other bands.

Bellino, who has performed for charities in the past, is looking forward to the Toys for Tots Benefit concert.

“ I love playing music for music’s sake, but it’s even more satisfying when I know there is a bigger cause,” she said. “Music is unifying. It brings people together.”

Clara Bellino’s CD, Embarcadero Love, can be purchased at cdbaby.com. For more information, go to www.clarabellino.com. Those who plan to attend the Toys for Tots Benefit concert are asked to bring donations of toys or money. Monetary donations will be used solely to purchase toys. For more information on the concert, call Rocco Rhodes at (530) 306-5393.

"Embarcadero Love":

"In this album, my friend, songwriter and chanteuse Clara Bellino offers a delightful and eclectic collection of French, English and Spanish songs rendered in her soulful and sultry voice. There are echoes of Sade, Edith Piaf, Alanis Morrisette and numerous other blues, rock, jazz and europop influences. Clara blends them seamlessly and makes them her own. Enjoy... Henceforth Clara will no longer be known as a French chanteuse but as a freedom singer!"

Chet Helms