“Since I was a little girl, I have always loved singing. I started songwriting at the age of seven. The first song was ‘The Hamster Song,’” Chiara Maria confessed, laughing. “After that, it was just like a way for me to process my emotions, but I never told anyone about it. I didn’t want anyone to know that I was writing songs.”
As a mentoree in RiverJAM Music’s mentorship program, sharing songs is a part of the process. For Chiara Maria, who went to college for a STEM-related program and did not want to pursue music due to stage anxiety, this, at one point, seemed unfeasible.
“Then about two years ago, I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron,” she said. I wasn’t familiar, but I can now admit that I currently have the book, which simultaneously functions as a course, on hold at my local library. “I just sat with myself and realized that I have this desire, and I’m supporting all these other artists because I’m an artist myself, but I’m hiding. I was like, ‘I have this life, and I love this, and I’m going to try. I’m going to share my gifts with the world.’”
From there, she wrote a song every day for a year and posted it online. This gradually helped her gain the confidence to perform live and record her songs.
“The Artist’s Way obviously got me to try this,” she continued. “Therapy helped me recognize that I have anxiety. I just did not know for my entire life. I didn’t really know what it was.” Then, it was a matter of trial and error for the singer as she expanded into attending jazz jams twice a week in the summer to practice performing, an experience that now serves as the foundation for her co-written song with RiverJAM. “I would mess up the words,” she recounted. “It really was just exposure therapy, accepting like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna fumble, but this is how I’m gonna get better.’ There’s no way not to. You’ve got to suck. Everyone’s a beginner at some point.”
“By the end of [that summer],” she said, “I was able to look someone in the eye and sing to them… I just changed it into that mindset of like, ‘I’m not here for people to like me. I’m here to do my thing. And if they like it, then that’s wonderful.’ I want to create a space where we’re all having fun.”
Chiara Maria’s genre of choice is jazz, something that modern-day musicians might shy away from. Singer-songwriter Laufey made jazz and classical music more accessible to the younger generation, and it wouldn’t be far off to say that Chiara Maria’s dark, sultry timbre and swing melodies resemble those of the Icelandic star.
Jazz, however, started for Chiara Maria with her grandmother, who shared the same name. “She’s not here anymore,” she said, speaking fondly of the relative. “I wish she were here to see me do my thing, but she was always supportive of me doing music.” When Chiara Maria’s family lost their house to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, it was her grandmother’s house that became their adopted sanctuary. “[My grandmother] would always have jazz on in the house. I would come home from school, and easy listening would be on. I was listening to Ella [Fitzgerald] and Frank [Sinatra]… When I went to college, I noticed that I was putting Ella Fitzgerald on when I went in the shower because I loved her tone and everything. So [my grandmother is] really the reason. She introduced me to it, which is cool, and now my stage name is her name, and it’s my actual name, too. It’s both of us, you know?”
Similar to RiverJAM mentoree Amanda Conti, RiverJAM found its way to Chiara Maria through Instagram. Having seen Johnny Kasun perform at The Asbury Book Cooperative’s songwriting circles, one of Kasun’s promotional stories about the program sparked Chiara Maria’s interest.
“It’s been pretty cool,” she said of the program and writing with Gordon Brown and Reagan Richards of Williams Honor. “I’ve never been to many co-writing spaces, just a few. So I was really excited to go in and co-write with Gordon and Reagan because they’re seasoned and I’m always looking to improve. That first session I performed for them, and I looked them in the eye, and Reagan was like, ‘That’s like a really good skill.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I went through a lot to get here.’ I am proud that I can do it now because I couldn’t always. We ended up writing the song about that.”
And in line with her desire to create a space for fun, Brown and Richards, in turn, have provided one for her. “I thought it was going to be more intense,” she said, “but it really wasn’t. It was just having fun.”
Post-mentorship, Chiara Maria aims to bring her lessons in collaboration further into the songwriting field by writing for other musicians. Until then, though, she’ll keep performing and recording her own songs, with her most imminent show on April 25 at The Delancey Rooftop in New York City and hopefully an album in the fall.
“I’m getting all my ducks in a row because to me, and I might just be crazy, but I really do feel like Asbury is going to be a new spot in the music industry,” she gushed about her current base. “I do feel like this is going to become like the new Nashville or L.A. in its own way.”
She concluded, “The community is so amazing… It really feels magical, and I’m just so grateful that I’m in it. This is something I’m gonna be telling my kids about.”
Photo courtesy of Samantha Savarino | Interviewed on April 13, 2026
Leave a comment