Daily Inspiration: Meet Camilla Bäckman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Camilla Bäckman.

Hi Camilla, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I am a Finnish singer, violinist and songwriter who has gotten to travel abroad through the world of music, circus and musical theatre. At the moment I am based in Las Vegas, Nevada, performing as the singer of O by Cirque du Soleil at the Bellaggio Hotel & Casino.

My mom was a classical singer and dad an artistic director of opera, so it was perhaps no surprise that I also loved singing, and did so before any words came out. I kind of consider music as my first language, and to communicate my emotions and needs from the very beginning. I started playing the violin at 4 years old and later piano and guitar and other instruments. I was always eager to travel when the opportunities arose. After an orchestra trip to Edmonton, Canada, at 14 years of age, I was not nervous to go to a language course to the South of France alone for 3 weeks when I was 15 years old. In fact, after that trip I wrote my first full songs in English language. Ever since I was a child I wrote stories, composed and improvised melodies with violin and piano and made some songs with my cousin, but something about that trip to France awoke the style of songs that I still write. Singer-songwriter folkish type ‘Finnish Americana’, you could say. Something pretty untypical for a young Finnish girl at those times when I think back on it. And therefor it was hard for me to even understand that I was a songwriter until later in life. The songs just pored out of me, and they weren’t mainstream. It was perhaps hard for me to understand the value of that at the time and I wasn’t always brave enough to expose my songs to others. It was my secret dream to bring them to life one day in the form of an album one day.

I have come to the conclusion that the thing that awoke those songs after the trip to France must ‘ve been falling in love properly for the first time – and travelling. My world broadened, and that must’ve unlocked the sleeping songs inside me. Love, travelling and different forms of art are still the sources of my inspiration in the songs I write to this day. One of the songs I composed in my 20’s is called Give Me A Moment. I felt it was a special song, but I didn’t know what meaning it will have in my life yet. That song became indeed a very important one to me and later I’ll tell you why. And it has to do with finding the people and environment that encourages you to be the very best and most honest you.

In my 20’s I performed as a violinist in orchestras and with different musical combinations like a string quartet, in Netherherlands, Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark and Portugal. And during my masters studies at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki I was determined to go study abroad for an exchange year. The ERASMUS exchange system is a wonderful ‘scholarship’ type of way to experience a part of your studies abroad. Instead of France what I always thought I would choose, I chose a completely new language and unexpected destination, the most furthest away from Finland inside Europe: Granada, Spain. Studying violin in Granada has probably been the best or one of the best years of my life to this day, and I have still very tight friendships from that year. One of them just visited me in Vegas.

When I was doing my diploma in violin, back in 2014, I participated in the Voice of Finland and made it to the live rounds, and was later asked back for a special season The Voice All Stars back in 2021. I consider those as great experiences and opportunities to learn and grow, and as a leap for me towards a more public singing career and the need to be an artist fully.

Maybe after all of the curiosity towards traveling and new experiences it is not surprising that I have ended up living abroad. But I never planned it to this extend, or never could I have imagined what was still to come. I always listened to American and British music and watched American tv shows but to live in America was never in my plans. But a certain audition for Cirque du Soleil in Helsinki Finland back in 2015, 10 years ago, changed everything. January of 2017 I ran away with the circus.

We created a new Cirque du Soleil show called Volta at CDS’s headquarters in Montreal, Canada. I became their lead vocalist together with the incredible Darius Anthony Harper, their violinist and an on-stage character – as the first Finnish singer to join CDS. We travelled North America for 3 years, up until the pandemic hit in 2020, when we were all sent to our home countries. Volta and many other shows never came back after the pandemic, but Cirque du Soleil has luckily survived the hit and is once again thriving. Besides their shows Volta and O, I have gotten to do a special event show called Vizion in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with them and Cirque Dreams Holidaze-tour in the East Coast of US that is also under CDS’s umbrella of shows.

Volta broadened my world once more with leaps and bounds.
The way I was always into many styles of music and instruments and composed original, not mainstream Finnish music, was all of the sudden completely normal in this environment, and – encouraged in the world of circus. Everyone was passionate about what they did, incredibly talented at their craft and still at the same time training other skills. I learned that circus as an art form has no limits and I resonated highly with that. It is not put in a box, it can be anything and not even the sky is the limit. I got to be me, nothing more or nothing less, I got to improvise musically to the gorgeous music of M83 and to expand and grow as a person and a human. And these amazing people became my family, my sisters and brothers, my mentors and my home away from home.

Once again, traveling, love, broadening my world view and being surrounded by different forms of art made me compose loads of songs. And through incredibly serendipitous encounters, and more specifically my new found wonderful friend Dep Kirkland, who asked me the question – what do you really want to do? And who I was brave enough to tell about my ‘secrect’ songs – he sent my demos to Nashville without me knowing. I ended up recording my songs in the legendary RCA Studios with producers Eddie Gore and Justyna Kelley and some incredible local musicians from Nashville. That album, my debut album of my originals that I released in 2022, got the name Give Me A Moment, which was also my first single. And so, my ‘secret songs’ finally found a physical form, produced with cinematic colors and acoustic instruments which I always loved, in the home of folk and Americana you could say. I’m truly grateful for Dep and whoever helped me with that journey to record and to release my debut album. I’m sure the 15 year old me could never see what’s coming but I hope I made her proud.

The last city we toured with Volta was Los Angeles, and I really loved it there. I even got to sing the National Anthem for Lakers with my then singer colleague from Volta, Eric Deshan. Before that I had sang to Yankees, Phillies, San Jose Sharks, White Sox and Atlanta Hawks, which was a really cool way to promote our show in different cities. But in LA I was living in Los Feliz and dreaming of one day maybe moving back there. I have come back twice, to visit friends and then once for a month to compose at the Finnish-Danish artist house. I am thrilled to live in Las Vegas now, which is so close to LA and I intend to visit very soon. I have some relatives in the West Coast and one of them, John Gabriel Beckman, designed some of the walls for the Chinese Theatre and the murals of Casino at at Catalina Island which I have yet to see. He also was the art director and set designer for Casablanca and Chaplin movies. Maybe for this reason I have felt some strange nostalgia and alignment on the West Coast. I did feel that something bigger is coming when we were visiting the Chaplin museum with my family in Switzerland back in 2016 – and 2 weeks later Cirque called about Volta.

During Volta I started studying acting in San Francisco and LA (Beverly Hills Playhouse & ZA Studios) which later drew me to New York to study musical theatre at the New York Film Academy for the year of 2023-2024. After that I got to do West Side Story, Fiddler on the roof and Mamma Mia in NCC Summer Theatre in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I’d say some of the highlights in living in New York was to perform as Maria of Sound of Music with Asian Symphony Orchestra at the Golden Nights Concert at Lincoln Center, and to perform with my friend Jordan Rudess (keyboardist of Dream Theatre) at Boston MIT.

I returned to Finland the spring of 2025, thinking if my adventures were coming to an end and thinking wether it is time to ‘settle down’. Well, in April, I received an email from Cirque once again. This time it was to the show that I had seen back in 2017 that had left jaw open in awe – O by Cirque du Soleil. When I visited friends in Vegas after the pandemic, I thought it would be nice to work in Vegas for couple months and I had been sad I missed the Grand Canyon – and now I am in that very same show I was so impressed by, 8 years later, performing as their singer. And yes, I visited Grand Canyon.

Obviously life is has not always been just a dance and a story with a happy ending. But I have always felt the need to focus on the positive and live it in a way of being grateful, excited and in awe of the opportunities that can arise when you have a passion and you work hard on it. And to cease the opportunities when they come, treat others as well as I can, and to write the ‘story of my life’ so far in a positive light. It gives me hope for the future. After all, it seems like that is what I have born here to be, a storyteller with a traveling heart.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The part that is always difficult and sometimes heartbreaking is to be far from the people you love back home, family and friends. Luckily I can travel to Finland on my breaks and a lot of people have visited me during the years abroad.

Another thing that you can not really prepare yourself for, is something like the pandemic that stopped the world in 2020. It was something so scary and it also took the opportunity to work from so many artists and different fields of work. It was a reminder of how you never know what is around the corner, and you have to be grateful for what you have and to be prepared for anything and not take things for granted.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I guess what could be interesting to know is that I was the first Finnish singer to be hired for Cirque du Soleil.

Other than performing, I have enjoyed doing voice over work in Finnish language, such as the role of Vi in Arcane and Princess Mal in the Descendants – The Royal Wedding, and I have sang in a lot of Disney movie choirs too.

Currently I am exploring Las Vegas, singing 10 shows a week at the beautiful Bellaggio, and like always – composing songs.

What does success mean to you?
Doing something you love and feel passionate about that feels aligned for you. Something that doesn’t make you sacrifice your values and which also hopefully brings joy to others. The icing on the cake, and actually a necessity for me personally, is if you can do it with likeminded people you love and care about.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.camillabackman.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/camilla_backman
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/camillabackmanofficial
• Youtube: http://youtube.com/camillabackman
• Other: https://ffm.to/camillabackmangivemeamoment

Image Credits
Main photo by Dylan Anthony Letorney Others photos: Britt Campbell Leif Laaksonen Preston Eggert Katariina Salmi Unruly Diplomats