Antoniette Costa is one of the more impressive freshmen on campus. When her Aunt Lilly passed away last September, Costa decided that the best way to help was to sing. Her CD, “Breakthru” debuted March 1st and is being sold on several websites including Amazon.com. A percentage of the profits from sale will go to the Rosalita Costa-Clark School Fund.
DAZE: This is a great thing. Tell me about the foundation?
ANTONIETTE COSTA: I’m sort of a shy person and I wouldn’t have normally put a CD out [but I wanted to help.] I have a website also, so that’s been a way that people can read more about me and my Aunt. She was a lawyer but she believed in education, so the money from profits goes to a faculty endowment fund in Pittsburgh.
DAZE: How did you get started singing?
A.C.: I’ve been singing for a long time for fun. In Middle School I just started writing music. I play piano and guitar. I usually write the music and the lyrics together at the same time. DAZE: So you write your own music?
A.C.: I copyrighted all my songs after doing some research on my own and now I have close to 40 songs. Then as a Christmas gift in ninth grade my mom got me studio time at a studio in Pittsburgh. I went and recorded four piano ballads. “Flown Away,” which is one of the songs on the CD, was one of these ballads. I wrote it about my grandfather and I wrote it in 15 minutes. Right outside the window there was a nest of baby birds and by the end all of them had flown away, so that’s where the name comes from. Other songs on the CD are accompanied by a band.
DAZE: How do you choose what to write about?
A.C.: I’ll write if something moves me, if its not something personal. The song “Murphy,” for example, I wrote after I read [the novel] One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. I wrote it as if I were singing from Chief’s perspective; it’s about the rapport between Chief and Murphy, but I just called it Murphy. “Caroline’s Camelot” I wrote after the plane crash with JFK Jr., and I wrote it from Caroline Kennedy’s perspective. Both were examples of songs I wrote about things that moved me.
DAZE: What are your plans for the future?
A.C.: I actually just recorded three new ones [songs] over Spring Break. One is called “Just a Day” and the second is called “Lilly” and it’s a piano ballad.
Antoniette’s website can be found www.antoniettecosta.com.
Archived article by Logan Bromer
Associate Arts and Entertainment Editor