Biography
Renata Zeiguer is a Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter, the daughter of Argentinean and Philippine immigrants. An NYC native, she grew up playing classical and jazz music, beginning on the violin and the piano at age 6, and listening to her grandmother play ragtime and tango music obsessively on a baby grand during family visits in Buenos Aires.
She began writing music as a kid, with mostly instrumental compositions that evolved from hourslong improvisations while seated at the keys after school. Initially drawn to composers like Prokofiev and Debussy, she grew to like songs that could be sung, falling in love with the great early 20th century American jazz standards, Brazilian tropicália, and the Beatles. She eventually expanded her compositions into lyrical song writing while studying at NYU, where she met long-time collaborator and producer of her debut, Adam Schatz. Since ing New York’s independent rock scene as an original member of Schatz’s band, Landlady, Renata has sung and played violin and keys on many projects including Ava Luna, Twin Sister, Leapling, Cassandra Jenkins, The Relatives (Ian McLellan Davis), Christopher Burke (Beach Fossils), Quilt, Skaters and Ex-Reyes.
In 2013, Renata self-released an EP entitled Horizons, a ghostly bouquet of “wildflowers growing tall and fast, decorated with percussive rattles, fiddles, bird sounds, harmonies, and ages for light to travel through” (DeliMagazine). Since then, Renata has been performing under the name Cantina. Her music is both wonderfully dreamy and strange – there is an ambiance that exudes a kind of dreamy exotica, a “timeless portal where Les Paul and Mary Ford meet Os Mutantes and the Pixies.” Some may hear a sort of weightless negative space where Joe Meek’s “I Hear a New World” meets Kate Bush. Renata’s debut on Northern Spy will be released later this year. (Northern Spy)
She began writing music as a kid, with mostly instrumental compositions that evolved from hourslong improvisations while seated at the keys after school. Initially drawn to composers like Prokofiev and Debussy, she grew to like songs that could be sung, falling in love with the great early 20th century American jazz standards, Brazilian tropicália, and the Beatles. She eventually expanded her compositions into lyrical song writing while studying at NYU, where she met long-time collaborator and producer of her debut, Adam Schatz. Since ing New York’s independent rock scene as an original member of Schatz’s band, Landlady, Renata has sung and played violin and keys on many projects including Ava Luna, Twin Sister, Leapling, Cassandra Jenkins, The Relatives (Ian McLellan Davis), Christopher Burke (Beach Fossils), Quilt, Skaters and Ex-Reyes.
In 2013, Renata self-released an EP entitled Horizons, a ghostly bouquet of “wildflowers growing tall and fast, decorated with percussive rattles, fiddles, bird sounds, harmonies, and ages for light to travel through” (DeliMagazine). Since then, Renata has been performing under the name Cantina. Her music is both wonderfully dreamy and strange – there is an ambiance that exudes a kind of dreamy exotica, a “timeless portal where Les Paul and Mary Ford meet Os Mutantes and the Pixies.” Some may hear a sort of weightless negative space where Joe Meek’s “I Hear a New World” meets Kate Bush. Renata’s debut on Northern Spy will be released later this year. (Northern Spy)
