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Singer CoConi To Play Colorama

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BY CHERYL BENTLEY

The Suncoast News

Published: July 11, 2008

HUDSON - She got her first paying gig at 13 and has never stopped performing.

Now a few days past 21, singer CoConi is to headline at Colorama Premier Performance Studio on Saturday.

Her father is American and her mother is English, and CoConi has lived in the United States and Britain. Now a Holiday resident, she recently recorded an album, "Venusian Butterfly," featuring lyrics she wrote herself.

CoConi - for a time she went by CoConi Monique - has opened for Grammy-nominee singer Natasha Bedingfield, has had a song at the top of the Web-based Pod Music Countdown chart and had her album produced by Simon Efemey, who has worked with metal and hard-rock groups such as Napalm Death, Paradise Lost and The Wildhearts.

Her bicontinental upbringing has made if difficult to relate to people her own age, CoConi said, so she has developed friendships with older adults. That has proved valuable in gigs before mature audiences.

Her feelings of isolation and the death of her father when she was 6 have been grist for the songs she writes.

"The isolation and fitting in - that's why I've been focused on music, because that's how I've been able to be connected with people," she said.

For her Colorama studio appearance, she will perform some of her own songs as well as covers of tunes that span generations.

CoConi learned to play to a diverse audience when she toured England for four years, starting at age 15. "There was such a mixture of people, you had to adapt your style to everyone," she said.

The songs she has written are "edgy and quirky with twinkly bits," she said. Those "bits" are synthesized sounds with keyboards. Members of her English band, guitarist Chris Healey and keyboardist Josh Pullen, will play at the Colorama event.

The pair also will perform with CoConi at Wednesday's screening of the Sundance Film Festival flick "American Teen."

IF YOU GO

Singer-songwriter CoConi will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Colorama Premier Performance Studio, 9302 Denton Ave., Hudson. The ticket price, $20, includes hors d'oeuvres and three cocktails or other beverages. For information, call (727) 863-7539 or go to www.coloramamusic.com or www.myspace.com/coconimusic.

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