) is a singer and song-writer. She is the founder of The Puppini Sisters

The Puppini Sisters

The Puppini Sisters are a vocal trio. Arion Berger described them as part of "Retro's futuristic vanguard" and described their sound as "swing-punk". The group has sought to be associated with a burlesque revival....

, a musical trio

Trio (music)

Trio is generally used in any of the following ways:* A group of three musicians playing the same or different musical instrument.* The performance of a piece of music by three people.* The contrasting section of a piece in ternary form...

 specializing in 1940s-style close harmony

Close harmony

Close harmony is an arrangement of the notes of chords within a narrow range. It is different from open harmony or voicing in that it uses each part on the closest harmonizing note , while the open voicing uses a broader pitch array expanding the harmonic range past the octave...

 vocal music.

Biography

Marcella Puppini started playing the piano at age 5, and hoped to become an opera singer

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

. At the age of 18, having completed her A levels in Classics (Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian Literature and Art History), Puppini moved to London to study at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. The school has an outstanding international reputation, and is considered one of the world's leading art and design institutions...

. Having graduated in fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

, Puppini went on to become Accessories Production Manager at Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood

Dame Vivienne Westwood, DBE, RDI is a British fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream.-Early life:...

 Studios, but kept her side career as a singer in clubs all around London.

Her first band, a punky outfit called Dead Sex Kitten, never really took off, but by now Puppini was guesting on several other projects including Rich B’s club hit Revolution, as well as making her own name in the Jazz and Cabaret scene both in the UK and in Italy.

In 1999 she left the fashion world and embarked on a degree course at Trinity College of Music

Trinity College of Music

Trinity College of Music is one of the London music conservatories, based in Greenwich. It is part of Trinity Laban.The conservatoire is inheritor of elegant riverside buildings of the former Greenwich Hospital, designed in part by Sir Christopher Wren...

, where she graduated in jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 Performance and Composition.

In 2004, Marcella Puppini created a new group called the Puppini Sisters: a quirky and glamorous close-harmony trio inspired by the sister groups of the ‘30s and ‘40s and a penchant for reworking pop classics in 1940s swing style – as well as penning witty and unusual original material.
The Puppini Sisters debut album, Betcha Bottom Dollar (UCJ, 2006), was awarded a Gold disc in the UK.

While touring with the Puppini Sisters, Puppini found herself irresistibly drawn towards the alternative Performance Art scene. It was there that she began meeting like-minded people, such as Marisa Carnesky (who invited her to perform on her Ghost Train in 2005), The Whoopee Club (with whom she worked as musical Director on several productions) and Duckie.

While recording and touring with The Puppini Sisters, who were awarded a Gold disc in the UK in 2007, Marcella founded Marcella and The Forget Me Nots, described as an all-girl Post-Apocalyptic Cabaret orchestra, with influences ranging from Kurt Weill and Jacques Brel to Baroque Opera and Prog Rock.
The 8-strong orchestra first debuted in 2008 at The Chelsea Theatre

Chelsea Theatre

Chelsea Theatre is a studio theatre located on the Kings Road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It presents, commissions, and produces new work and is the only theatre in London dedicated to Performance Art...

’s Sacred Season of Performance Art - for which they created a site-specific show based on stories collected from Chelsea residents, and soon the band were appearing at London Underground venues, such as The Last Days of Decadence, Corsica and Bistrotheque, and at Arts festivals such as Queer Up North.

The band’s first official release came out in January 2010 as part of Twisted Cabaret, a part-audio, part-video compilation curated by French label Volvox. Among the video content will be the clip for ‘Monster Mae’, a blood-spattered extravaganza directed by regular collaborator Alex de Campi

Alex de Campi

Alex de Campi is a British-American music video director and comics writer.-Biography:De Campi was educated at Princeton University, majoring in Art History. Prior to her writing career, she worked as an investment banker in Hong Kong...

 (the woman behind Amanda Palmer

Amanda Palmer

Amanda MacKinnon Gaiman Palmer , sometimes known as Amanda Fucking Palmer, is an American performer who first rose to prominence as the lead singer, pianist, and lyricist/composer of the duo The Dresden Dolls...

’s controversial ‘Leeds United’) that mixes live performance with high-camp photography of shocking demises.

Sources

• Stephen Holden, A Trio Winks at the 1940s and Nods at Today’s Tunes, New York Times, May 31, 2007.
• David Whetstone, It's back to future for sisters "With their 40s fashions and lethal lipstick, the Puppini Sisters are going back to the future", The Newcastle Journal
  The Journal (newspaper)
  The Journal is a daily newspaper produced in Newcastle upon Tyne. Published by ncjMedia, , The Journal is produced every weekday and Saturday morning and is complemented by its sister publications the Evening Chronicle and the Sunday Sun.The newspaper mainly has a middle-class and professional...
  
  , October 24, 2006. Accessed via subscription 18 May 2008.
• Catherine P. Lewis, The Puppini Sisters "Betcha Bottom Dollar" Verve, Washington Post, August 24, 2007, page WE09.
• Helen Brown, Pop CDs of the week: The Puppini Sisters, The Daily Telegraph
  The Daily Telegraph
  The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
  
  , July 29, 2006.
• Stephen Brooks, They're Not Related, but Sister, Can They Swing, Washington Post, August 30, 2007, page C07.
• Misha Berson, Pardon me boy, do you like to jive?, Seattle Times, August 21, 2007.
• Sisters make chart history, The Birmingham Mail
  Birmingham Mail
  The Birmingham Mail is a tabloid newspaper based in Birmingham, UK but distributed around Birmingham, The Black Country, Solihull, Warwickshire and parts of Worcestershire and Staffordshire. The newspaper, which was re-branded from the Birmingham Evening Mail in October 2005, is one of the biggest...
  
  , August 11, 2006. Accessed via subscription 18 May 2008.
• Vicky Addinall, Sister act "Marcella Puppini, founder of vivacious 1940s-inspired girl group The Puppini Sisters talks to Vicky Addinall about her passion for Portobello, The Cobden Club and Ruby Woo", Grove Magazine (London
  London
  London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
  
  ), April 2008.
• Alan Pedder and Mario Onnis, Wears The Trousers, Nov 2009, Wears The Trousers, 2010, a girl-group odyssey #1: marcella & the forget me nots

External links

• Marcella Puppini official web site