description
Roz Pearson spent her childhood learning the words and music from her big brother’s eclectic collection of records that included songs from the hit parade mixed in with latin-jazz records from Sergio Mendez and Brazil ’66, Charlie Byrd, Walter Wanderley, Stan Getz and Antonio Carlos Jobim. On the newly acquired TV she watched all the musicals, particularly the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies that contained what became the Jazz Standards of the day. These movies not only influenced Roz’s musical tastes, but also her love of costume. Roz is a graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) in the Jazz Department and subsequently recorded two of her own CDs and appears on 3 other CDs including an ABC Compilation Album.
Roz’s musical style was fed and influenced by a broad range of musical genres. She loves to combine these genres by jazzing up or bossa nova-ising pop songs as well as performing the classical jazz standards, bossa nova and sambas. Roz’s repertoire has an international flavour, with songs sung in other languages – Spanish, Portuguese and French as well as English. Her repertoire covers music from the 1920’s right up to fairly current classics such as Back to Black by Amy Winehouse and also includes originals written by Roz and in combination with other Australian musicians. Roz has performed in Western Australia, Melbourne and Tasmania in combos from duos right up to 10-piece bands as herself and as her alter-ego, the fun loving Juanita Banana.
