Deborah Di Maski
Deborah showed her love for music at the age of 8 when she started piano classes. As a teenager she took vocal lessons and at the age 18 began singing at private clubs in Curitiba, Brazil (where she was born). Hearing her for a first time was a revelation, and hearing her again…a lifelong passion. Such is the voice of Deborah. She has the remarkable ability to convey more emotion in a single phrase, sometimes in a single pained sigh or high-spirited yelp than many artist can an entire song. Musicians and composer by the time Deborah started recognized her ability to change her voice song to song and also her complete command on her body and soul.
Deborah is a greater interpreter of Brazilian music from romantic to samba and bossa nova , even though she studied 4 years in a completely different vocal arena, opera, at Rio de Janeiro Municipal Theater School. She also sings classics in Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Fados, and English.
Her magic is on her range. She grasps the very depths of meaning from a ballad sustaining an almost unberable aching tension, and then suddenly takes flight into an upper register to express the infinite solitude of which she is capable. Songs of palpable as told through “He Is Out of Our Lives” the song she penned in memory of Michael Jackson after he parted. The personal obstacles she faced through the time of recording her album were called the attention of the producer and musicians, but Deborah usually triumphs over her tribulations. When she started to record “He Is Out Of Our Lives” she spent hours in the studio and days trying to sing without crying. She eventually recorded, but the cry that you hear is real and the production let her go anyway.
Deborah Di Maski met Michael Jackson in 1978 when he was recording “Of The Wall” in Hollywood. She told stories of Brazil to Michael about favellas (the poor life in the hills) and about samba schools, lifestyle, Brazilian women and the place that she used to live, Copacabana, near Ipanema. Little moments they spent together they lived like two kids, telling each other with recognizable songs. Because of her limited English at that time most of her stories were described about the singing of recognized Brazilian songs. Michael also sung to Deborah…always encouraging her with appropriate song to fit the moment. Deborah found in Michael Jackson her twin soul, artist, creative, eccentric and a lover for the audience. Both she and Michael also endured a very stern father. Though Deborah’s father would always try to prohibit her singing career, she found parallels in the way Michael’s father treated him. ” We shared our life of pain singing to each other. Michael told me that sometimes he walked out the house looking for someone to talk to and I told him that the same happened to me because nobody understood my lovely and complicated passion for music and Michael agreed saying that nobody understands our lifestyle”, recalls Deborah.
In 1977 Michael acted as “Scarecrow” in the “Wiz” and in 2007 Deborah acts as “Glinda” in the “Wizard of Oz”. Now with Michael Jackson gone, without understand why so soon, she wrote “He Is Out Of Our Lives” offering this song to everyone in the world who love and admire Michael for his generous heart and beautiful soul.
