Today we’d like to introduce you to Margarita Monet.
Margarita, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was born in Armenia, when I was three, my family moved to Moscow, Russia. Over there, my mom gave me to an arts academy, where I was taking music, ballet, theater classes, and I started to perform as early as four years old. I instantly fell ink love with the arts. I started to play the piano and soon, that became very serious, I was doing competitions, concerts, at the same time I was in a ballet school as well, so my childhood was filled with lessons, performances and I loved it.
When I was 11, my family moved to Houston, TX. It was a huge change for me and a bit of a culture shock, I continued to play piano, eventually went to performing arts high school and after graduation moved to New York to attend NYU. I loved living in the city, loved being surrounded by the arts. After a few years in NYC, something made me move to Los Angeles, I’m still not sure what prompted that, as I loved NYC! But I believe everything happened for a reason, as a few months after moving to LA, I met guitarist Dave Bates by chance and our paths aligned and we started our band Edge Of Paradise and never looked back 🙂
Starting the band, from the beginning, we dedicated all our energy, time, money, soul, blood sweat and tears into it! That’s what it takes, it’s not an easy path launching a sound, creating a world that people would want to be a part of, it’s a worldwide business, and we started from nothing.
It took us a few years to really find our sound, and at first touring was incredibly hard, we were booking our own shows, driving in circles across the USA and investing a lot into promotion, and of course the music.
It’s really rewarding to look back at almost ten years of building this band, this world, we got to tour US, Europe, Japan, we’re excited that we have a label partner Frontiers Records that are backing the band now, it’s incredible to meet people all across the world and hear that our music has a positive impact to their life!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Of course not haha! We definitely had a lot of challenges! Funding is hard, from the beginning we put a lot of emphasis on quality of the production of the music. We wanted our music to have the same quality as the biggest bands out there, and even though we had a lot of support from producers we worked with, the cost is still very substantial. Then you add the costs of music videos, touring, to really launch a new band, it takes about 100K, of course you have to have great music to back it, and a great live show, but it comes down to how much you can invest, it will determine how fast you’re moving forward. Of course, there are exceptions, and some people get lucky… But Dave and I worked very hard, I taught music all day long, Dave as well and we just found ways to make it happen! That’s always been our motto, to get a vision and figure out a way to bring it to life!
We also went through some very band business relationships, had two very bad record deals, had a bad manager, a lot of people in this business are looking to take advantage to make a quick buck from you. So we had to learn some lessons to get where we are today! But all the highs and lows make us who we are today, and our new album Universe, our deal with our label Frontiers, our new management, everything lead us to this point, and everyone had their own journey, the key is to keep moving forward and never giving up!
Can you give our readers some background on your music?
Well, we’re a rock band based in Los Angles, CA. Our music has industrial, electro-rock and symphonic elements.
We have three albums out and one EP:
Mask (2011)
Immortal Waltz (2015)
Alive (2017)
Universe (2019)
We toured US, Europe, Japan, recently filmed a music video in Iceland and planning USA, Canada and South American tours for 2021!
I believe we have a unique sound that sets us apart. Dave and I come from very different background, and we found a unique way to merge to create a unique and a pretty epic sound 🙂
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Releasing our latest album UNIVERSE and touring Europe. 2019 has been the hardest and most rewarding year for us! We put everything we had into the album Universe. We had Mike Plotnikoff producing and Jacob Hansen mixing the album. They really got our vision and we are so proud of how the album turned out! We received such a great response and the day our album came out, we left for our first full six weeks European tour, opening for Sonata Arctica!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.EdgeOfParadiseBand.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edgeofparadise/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EdgeOfParadiseBand/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/edgeofparadise
- Other: www.EdgeOfParadiseStore.com
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