OUÇA O ÁUDIO DAS RESPOSTAS EM INGLÊS (HEAR THE AUDIO OF ANSWERS IN ENGLISH)

Dianne van Giersbergen founded Ex Libris in 2003, releasing with the band the albums “Amigdala” (2008) and “Medea“.

In 2013 he had a brilliant passage through the German band Xandria, where he recorded with them two albums, especially the second one, “Theater of Dimensions” (2017).

In 2018 she turned entirely to her original band and released the splendid EP “Ann, Chapter 1: Anne Boleyn“, the first part of the progressive metal trilogy “ANN”, whose second part we meet next Friday (15 / 03) with the arrival of “Ann, Chapter 2: Anastasia Romanova“.

Dianne had graciously granted an audio interview, which was minutily transcribed by the confrere Renato Azambuja, which you can read on the lines below or listen to the audio file on the link above the English text

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH DIANNE VAN GIERSBERGEN

Your vocal extension is something impressive. When and how did you get interested in singing and music?

That was a very long time ago because on my fourth birthday I received singing lessons as a birthday gift from my parents because they had noticed my interest in music and they thought that was a good idea and think we can only agree to that so it was a long time ago and I´ve been hooked to singing ever since.

How do you take care of your voice? Any specific daily rituals to keep her in shape?

Well, daily rituals would be having enough sleep, because that´s the only way for your voice to recover, when it´s resting, and furthermore drinking enough water so hydration is very important. No yelling, of course, but I guess those things are only logical so, no yelling. I hate, hate smoke from cigarettes but also stage smoke because it´s trully damaging for the voice. Drinking too much alcohol, especially drinking alcohol when you sing at concert is also damaging, so I don´t do that.
Daily routines… I guess it´s just singing. Yes. But when you have had singing lessons as long as I did them, well you have a sort of routine of how to warm up the voice, which can be different for every other voice actually because they´re all different instruments.

I´m reading question three now…

You can easily move from a more ripped tuning (rock and metal) to lyric. So much study and discipline to achieve this or the feeling also helps a lot?

Of course studying and discipline helps a lot. I see no other way to get there because you can be talented in sing, you can be talented but you still need to develop your instrument, no one is born with a fully matured and trained instrument, that simply doesn´t exist. Even when it sounds like that it doesn´t mean that you still have the vocal condition and that you won´t hurt your voice if tou simply keep on doing everything by I-think-this-sounds-ok!.

How was Ex Libris formed?

Well, I actually found the band together with the first drummer who is called Joost van de Pas and it might be a cool thing to know that all the videos, the studio documentaries that are now featuring on the Ex-Libris pages are actually shot by the same guy, so our first drummer, Joost van de Pas, and at certain point he decided that this wasn´t for him anymore, playing in Ex-Libris, and he wanted to do something else and he turned…well, firstly he turned into carpentry but then he turned into, well, starting his own video company which is very busy right now and we´re helping him out and he´s helping us out so it’s a win-win situation and I must say that I think he´s really talented ‘cause I love those studio documentaries.

After showing your great talent with the Ex Libris Band, you were invited to join the German band Xandria, where the band recorded two of the group’s best albums, doing a lot to make them grow. Summarily you were disconnected from Xandria and posted a statement visibly shocked and hurt. Would you like to take this opportunity and add something more about what happened?

Well, you know, I don´t want to dive into what happened, I gave my side of the story already in the statement and I wish to keep it at par because I don´t believe that someone can be happy when lingering in the past, that´s also where I regain to my strenght and I´m moving full force ahead with Ex-Libris which is actually what makes me really happy because I can do whatever I want in Ex-Libris, there are no restrictions and, yeah! The future is bright!

In regrouping Ex Libris, you not only did it, but as it came with “ANN – A Progressive Metal Trilogy,” beginning with EP “Chapter 1: Anne Boleyn“, a daring and very elaborate project that had fans, via crowdfunding to materialize.

How did this idea come about to honor three iconic historical women called “Ann”?

Actually, because I had such a busy schedule with Xandria, we were, Ex-Libris, were already planning on doing more releases that would combine one album simply so that it could cope with my busy calendar. But why three? Because Ann, The Metal Trilogy is our third major release. So it´s the third full lenght album, so then we decided that we should divide everything by three. So we should have three chapters, we should have three songs per chapter and in every song somehow the digit three is again hidden, so there´s a nice naughty challenge. And why Anne? Well, we had such a succes with “Medea”, with was writing for “Medea” and we really stumbled on the fact that this was, how do you say, we had like a ‘oooooh’ moment in which we realised that when we have a female character for me to portray that that´s just a little bit of magic right there. So we wanted to do that again, but we were looking for a woman to portray but it turned out to be multiple because we did this, this digit three that should divide everything and I have always been a fan of the story of Anne Boleyn and Koen came up with Anastasia Romanova and of course we have a third Ann, which is not yet to announce, so I also won´t and of course there´s other stories as well but the ‘Ann’ stories stood out and that´s why we decided on calling the trilogy Ann.

Upon hearing the EP “Chapter 1: Anne Boleyn“, we realize that you sing as if it were Anne Boleyn herself reincarnated, especially in the song “The Miscarriage“. Did you study her story a lot to feel and pass on her dramas in the songs?

Oh, yes! With Anne Boleyn and also what I did now with Anastasia Romanova, I do a lot of research, really lot of research, I really dive into character and at the pointing of recording sing as if I was the one who lived their lives. I think that´s the only way of paying tribute to the lives and the stories and also the only way to bring them back from history because people are only interested in what they can emphathise with. And that is this! So they really have to feel that simpathy for the character, and you cannot to that by simply telling a story, you have to live the story. I´m happy that you’ re hearing me and her or her and me because it somehow says that I did my job right, and I hope that you will feel the same way about Anastasia Romanova.

What is your involvement in the process of creating the songs of Ex Libris? Lyrics? Does it make up the piano?

Well, we write the song together and then mostly it is Bob Wijtsma, our guitar player, and Koen Stam, our keyboard player, and me, the three of us, and then drums and bass are later, and, how you say that?…mixed in the equation! But it´s a back-and-forth between the three of us. I write my own vocal lines but before we start I do my research and I make a timeline, I sketch the rough outlines of which subject we´re gonna talk about in which song so that they have a blueprint for the emotions and the twist and turns in the story which they then can translate into music.

Now we are about to know the EP “Ann, Chapter 2: Anastasia Romanova“, which will arrive on March 15th. Tell us about it and this second historical “Ann”, the inspirational muse of this work.

Well, Anastasia Romanova is the youngest daughter of the last Czar of Russia, the Czar Nicholas The Second, and he is the last Czar of the Romanov Dinasty. Of course they don´t know that. When the story starts they think the dinasty will live on forever but of course it does not because of the revolution is already brewing and, well, during the chapter the revolution takes over and they become imprisoned and eventually get murdered, get executed. Why this story? Well, as I already told you, Anastasia was chosen by Koen Stam, our keyboard player, who really wanted to tell the story and he wanted to tell the real story, so not the Disney one in which we are let to believe that Anastasia escaped and that she was still alive many many years after the execution and then returned and blah, blah, blah, because when you do a research and you dive into the facts then you will learn that this is not possible at all. So we wanted to tell the honest story and of course it is still an interpretation but the facts match. It is however my interpretation. When I added the feelings through the songs, so the way SHE felt, the interesting thing is that it´s so different not only in music to chapter one but also in story because, well, Anne Boleyn was a woman who was far ahead of her time, being a woman who knew what she wanted and then we have Anastasia who is basically trapped in the naivety of her parents and who was doomed to her destiny because of her parents who simply cannot believe that the revolution is really there and was so involved in the disease of their younger son hemophilia that they turn a blind eye to what is happening outside and, well, that´s basically why they never got to escape. Ok, so now I´m totally lost to which question we were.

Ex Libris will tour announcing “Ann, Chapter 2: Anastasia Romanova”?