Sofi Paez

Apart from her journey from Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose, where she grew up, to Germany’s capital, Berlin, where she now lives, the road that led SOFI PAEZ to SILENT STORIES culminates with a bewitching, enriching debut album which marks the pianist, singer and composer’s status as the first signing to award-winning composer and producer Ólafur Arnalds OPIA Community. Encouraged further by her mother, she began piano as well as ballet lessons, then moved to the Instituto Superior de Artes to focus on the former. Before long, she was winning awards, but three days after she graduated, she announced she was quitting. She began teaching the instrument instead, as well as studying design, and for a year didn’t even touch her piano. She did, however, join renowned producer Askjell Discord server, and it was here she made a friend who introduced her to Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds and Hania Rani provoking her to start composing. Before she knew it, she’d entered the studio with producer Miguel Murrieta Vásquez who, alongside modern classical luminaries Ben Lukas Boysen and Lisa Morgenstern provided occasional instrumental assistance. “Then my grandma passed away,” she recalls. “It was fucking hard. But this grieving is an important part of the album.” “It's very difficult for me to open up,” PAEZ concludes. “I'm afraid of telling people too much. So these are the SILENT STORIES that I carry with me every day...”