equality factor: Self-empowerment, self-love, courage.
music heroins: Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Björk, Missy Elliot, Sophie Hunger, Sevdaliza.
based in: Stuttgart, Germany.
It was while she was walking in the woods with the intention of finding a new artistic name, that suddenly a young "Kitz" (the German word for a young deer) stood in her way. Thanks to this magical experience, KiTZ immediately became the name that Anna gave herself as an identity for her new artistic production. A short, simple, and pure name born from the need to be independent and free, not only as an artist but also as an individual.
Anna grew up in a home where music was always present, her father was a well-known German guitar hero, so there was always a lot of music in and around her home, she remembers. Despite not playing any instrument, nor read the notes as a child, singing has always been her outlet (secretly). Her own melodies and her own words have always been in her head, and she enjoyed expressing herself by singing while taking long walks around her hometown, Stuttgart. Since then, for Anna, music has been her outlet, her retreat, her therapy, her meditation, and her problem-solving between her and the outside world.
“Things developed very quickly as I was so happy finally finding someone who could speak my musical language and it just fit perfectly at that moment.”
In 2007, she bought a computer, and from that moment on everything changed in her life. She discovered "Garageband" (an Apple application that allows the user to create pieces of music) and understood that she could finally start playing instruments (electronic but the instrument itself), and so she produced the first songs that she later gave as a present for the birthdays of her family and friends. As time went by, KiTZ's passion grew more and more. The idea of using atmospheric spaces and filling them with words has always been her style, however, at the same time she didn't feel very comfortable with her production skills. But if there is one thing we are always sure of, it is that when passion is felt from the purest, life puts you in front of the right, people.
It was at her first solo show in 2008 that she met Michael Fiedler, who would soon become not only her producer and friend but also her bandmate. “Things developed very quickly as I was so happy finally finding someone who could speak my musical language and it just fit perfectly at that moment,” KiTZ told us. This is how ANNAGEMINA was born, a duo of anti-pop electronic music that was built and developed naturally during the first years of their musical career, and which had a long trajectory of almost ten years in which Anna learned, developed as an artist and enhanced her artistic quality.
“Time for a change and I’m very happy with the result. I believe that you can only be in a good co/working space or relationship when you don’t depend on each other when it's a free-will decision”
In 2019, KiTZ decided to take a turn in her artistic career, and as a consequence of this decision she entered a phase of struggle and deep thoughts because she didn't want to give up her band to be able to exist as a soloist, but at the same time, she wanted to be able to carry out her musical career herself and feel fully Anna, without depending on anyone else but her. There was no way to avoid it, as her way of composing music had also changed. She had started to develop her own way of using her electronic instruments and her understanding of how she likes music. In early 2019, she made the music for a play of which she was the only musician on stage who performed with a live dancer in the theater for an hour; that challenge helped her a lot to strengthen her confidence to launch herself as a solo artist.
“I play a chord or simple melody and in the right moment the right words come out.”
KiTZ now acts within a musical genre that is constantly reinventing itself, innovating, and mixing spaces with other types of arts, its search has become an exploration, it likes to develop spaces around each song, something that leaves as a result what she calls an "organic vibration", something that also happens with the composition of her lyrics. “…It really depends on the mood I’m in and what instrument is around…” said. She confesses that she never tries to sit down with a pen and paper trying to write a song with a specific message, it just happens. Anna is an artist who turns many of her daily moments into artistic expressions, making it clear that every second of her life breathes art, she transforms everything into art, into compositions, into melodies, into expressions, into knowledge, into learning, she gives everything a special meaning in her daily life, which in the end, she triggers into a clear message, "her message". Her artistic demands are her self-empowerment, self-love, courage, authenticity and expressing "difficult" moments such as self-doubt or fear, something that all human beings go through, but not everything they face, however, Anna does not hide it, she does not escape it, she confronts it, and so she fights it.
“I’m an artist and I know I have to have some kind of output.”
Her debut solo album was finished long before the pandemic slowed down the world, however, like many artists, its release was postponed, but she confesses that in the end, it felt good, “Truth is-people are feeling more lost and vulnerable and don’t know what to expect from the future, all those feelings I’ve felt going through this phase of starting something new because the time demanded it somehow. Messages like Never Fear or Dark are always appropriate but now they hit deep because a lot of people feel what is”.
“Singing is so natural to me that I wanted to work with what I love most in life and since I got so much coming out it seemed natural to work in no other way but to write my own music.”
Anna has never felt unequal to anyone. In ten years of her career, she has never "felt" problems of inequality around her within the industry, but that does not mean she is not aware of them. Nevertheless, she believes that if you work with passion and heart, overcoming equality problems will be possible as long as you are authentically yourself and practice what you stand for, or what you like to bring up - "it's great to be a supporter in the equality empowerment".
Her musical heroines come from all genres, from Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Björk, to Missy Elliot, Sophie Hunger, Sevdaliza, or FKAtwigs, that is a door of millions of meters high that teaches us to know a little more to KiTZ, an artist as authentic, as those mentioned, an artist with a character that does not depend on anything or anyone when it comes to her art.
