Anastasia Filippova is a Music Teacher, Songwriter, Singer and Piano Player. She was born and raised in Russia, and moved to Canada in 1998.
Anastasia wears quite a few hats. The songwriter's hat has a few feathers, the singer's hat is green with leaves, the teacher hat is a burette type, environmentalist hat is made of recycled paper, and many more. She is never bored of the varied life she is living. Her biggest dream of all is to write super songs that people will say: "I discovered an amazing song yesterday, listen to this!" about to their friends. "I'd love for people to listen to one of my songs and say, "This was our wedding song", or "This is my summer of '99 song", if that ever happens, that'll be a dream come true" says Anastasia about her notion of success.
When Anastasia came from Russia in September of 1998, her life changed dramatically. Leaving life long friends at 12 years of age was heartbreaking, at the same time teaching Anastasia a great lesson about friendships, and gifting her with one of her newest songs called "Living in the Memory":
"There's one thing that we've realized.
It's never like it used to be,
Tears run down the face,
But it's never like the good old days."
"This song is about understanding the reality of time, and that although I always imagine going back and reconciling with my friends, it most likely won't be as I envision it in my mind – it won't be a dream like we sometimes imagine it to be."
Anastasia started writing songs in grade 8 – ultimately bored in history class; ideas started developing themselves into poems, which later became songs. "I had no idea how to put music to songs, although I knew how to play classical piano, which is reading sheet music, and not improvisational at all. I found out about a songwriting contest with a very close deadline, so under pressure I sat at my piano and came up with some music which weren't chords, but merely notes that sounded allright together with what I was singing."
Now Anastasia's songs have developed to have very fascinating chord changes and mostly love themed lyrics. "I will never cease to enjoy writing love songs, but I'm getting more into philosophy of life and the world, so that weaves itself into my writing. I've learned that I enjoy all sorts of writing - opinions, lyrics, stories, comedy, even though I don't claim to be expertly in any of those, haha!"
Everything worked out for Anastasia positively so far, fitting like a puzzle – learning piano which became a part of Anastasia's adventure, boredom in class leading to songwriting, vocal discovery after coming to Canada and Anastasia is still not finished discovering all the musical avenues she is going to live through (orchestration, film scoring, music production and much more.)
After coming from Russia in 1998, Anastasia kept studying music after realizing this is a talent to be developed further. Within last 10 years, Anastasia turned from talented child into promising performing artist and songwriter. While living in Ottawa she worked hard to improve her talent by taking classes in vocal, songwriting and other musical skills.
Anastasia sings originals and cover songs at her concerts. She also takes requests for her concerts, but asks a minimum two weeks so she can learn the tunes. The soulful voice smoothly runs over the notes, the piano chords jump where they aren't expected.