March, 2012 Issue

Bella Electric Strings

Campus Activities Magazine&r is very excited to bring a BRAND NEW act to the campus market that we think could be a breakout hit. You saw it here first.

Bella Electric Strings takes a very lovely and classically trained quartet (all with impressive credentials, check out the extended version of this story on our site for more details) and sets them loose in a rock concert style barrage of contemporary and classic hits. Not only that, but they are available for workshops before their events, allowing for possible cross-funding with fine arts departments, a learning experience for students and a great teaser for the concert.

Currently very successful in Las Vegas, Bella Electric Strings has some pretty impressive credits, including sharing stages with Beyonce, Shakira and Andrea Bocelli, they also appeared on Season 1 of "America's Got Talent."

Recently featured in a David Foster & Friends concert, the girls are sponsored by Yamaha exclusively on their instruments and perform many Yamaha String Educator clinics.

They've been associated with other big name acts, including Richard Marx and supporting parts of the string sections at The Pearl in Las Vegas for acts like Yellow Brick Road Symphonic Rock Show and for classic rock icons and "Smoke On The Water" authors Deep Purple.

Bella Electric Strings is tagged as "The Rock String Quartet, Period" and led by Nina Di Gregorio, who plays lead 5-string violin and acts as arranger for the group. She sits down with CAM for an exclusive interview, the first given about the girls entering the campus market. "I started writing arrangements of pop tunes I liked when I was in high school, but at the time, I didn?t have any money to buy electric instruments."

Nina is from Lewiston, New York, located upstate (way upstate- due north of Buffalo, west of Rochester and south of Toronto). "My friends and I had an all-girl group and I always knew that when I had more money I would want to get the whole electric thing going. I moved to Las Vegas after I graduated college and began working with Yamaha. I started doing clinics for them and they would use my arrangements in the clinics to go out and demonstrate their electric and silent instruments. Eventually I got a full artist's sponsorship from Yamaha, so we finally had the means to get all the electric instruments and really put the vision of this project together."

From there it was a matter of building the perfect roster. "We went through many people, and some of them didn't have the talent, some didn't have the personality, etc. Finally we found four girls that just really fit and that's where we have been for about the last three years."

Since then, they have played a wide variety of gigs in even more locations. "We travel a lot," Nina says. "We do many different things; we perform as a feature act for many corporate dates and we also perform in support of a lot of major artists. We were the featured acoustic string quartet for Richard Marx in his Las Vegas show, and we will be playing with him again this February. On December 29th, we were the featured electric string act for the music producer, David Foster, in his "David Foster and Friends" concert in Vegas. Besides working backing up major artists, we also have our own thing, the pure electric string act."

Which, for the purposes of this article, is the really interesting part. "We play really great, high energy and recognizable rock like Zeppelin and Hendrix and contemporary picks with electric instruments, using effects pedals and lots of cool choreography and production. It's a well rehearsed and formulated show."

Not to say this is a cookie cutter show however and, just because they are brand new to the campus circuit as a whole, does not mean they are not quite adept at adapting to new audiences. "Every gig is different, as is every group," Nina explains. "Sometimes we will get a call because the crowd might be very conservative. We bring our long black formal concert gowns and acoustic instruments and play completely classical sets. Sometimes the call says it will be a crowd of under 40 (or even 20) single guys, so glam it up a bit and we'll put on our sequined skirts and play Nirvana. We tailor our set list to the audience all the time and have no problem working with clients on a gig-specific basis. It's the same thing we do when we work with major artists who need us to look and play a certain way. We have gotten very good at adapting. If we are playing with Beyonce, we are probably going to have a little bit more makeup on than with Richard Marx. We tailor our look to the style of the artist, and we can do the same thing for schools, depending on their needs."

This is an act a buyer can use anywhere, whether it is for the featured act in a theater, after dinner entertainment at a banquet, a way to draw people at an outdoor event or any other application you can think of, because their audience can be completely general. "Well, Facebook tells me we're really popular with the 24-35 year old male age range," she laughs, "that tends to be the most active group." She says this a bit tongue-in-cheek. "But all joking aside, because we play such a wide variety of dates, in a typical year we are hitting board game demographics," she quips. "That's ages 8-80 for those of you not keeping up. "The music we do ranges from the things kids would recognize like Lady Gaga and the Black Eyed Peas to things my parents would recognize like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles to things even the older generation would recognize and love like Frank Sinatra and Elvis."

Just on a personal note from your editor, when we decided not only to publicize this act for the first time ever to the campus market, but to also help them find representation and form a marketing plan, it was done based on an experience. I've seen Bella Electric Strings in action, showcasing at the 2011 Association of Entertainment Professionals (www.aepworldwide.org) Signature Event and I have to say this is an impressive show. It's high energy, eye-catching, relatable to young and old, and we feel highly marketable for campuses.

They have celebrity credits, impressive educational backgrounds and resumes, huge doses of talent and aesthetic appeal (to put it mildly), are tied to the arts with ability to educate and entertain. What more could you ask? They are reasonably priced for the campus market. Contact Rich at GP Entertainment to find out about availabilities at 866-812-8248 or rich@gpcollegeentertainment.com.

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