Contrast is Anita Ferrer’s striking essence, pervading her ethnicity, music, art, poetry and stage persona. The drama of good against evil, light piercing the darkness, love tempering hate male power balancing female fragility have always fascinated...
Contrast is Anita Ferrer’s striking essence, pervading her ethnicity, music, art, poetry and stage persona. The drama of good against evil, light piercing the darkness, love tempering hate male power balancing female fragility have always fascinated Anita. Complex, weighty subject matter and modal harmonies weave throughout songs like “Testosterone, Logic and Intuition and “I Keep Falling.” Her “out of the box” composing style delves deeply yet seems hauntingly familiar.
Anita’s voice, poetry and Freddy Mercury-influenced fashions kept her from succumbing to the effects of her troubled, abusive childhood, The Painfully shy, insecure multi-cultural teen, who no one wanted to hang out with, was going to be a rock star and fashion designer when she graduated, but her dreams collapsed with her placement in a foster home in her senior year.
Domestic violence, divorce and chronic battles with Lyme Disease and a near-death episode with carbon monoxide poisoning would postpone her dreams to be a recording artist. It took almost a decade later before she exorcized her demons. She was no longer a victim of her tragedies. She went back to school earning her associates degree, graduated magna cum laude and her battles and victories became the compelling fodder for her musical and literary works.
“I’m a spiritual pit bull,” she laughs. The tenacious spitfire emerged triumphant from the Phoenix's pyre and set about to model her warrior mentality to the broken people she met in her travels. Her close kinship with hardship, suffering, poverty and alienation gave her the leverage and insight to teach and mentor girls, younger and misplaced women on how to be self-sufficient during her eight year tenure as coordinator of her business program, Just the Right Touch, of Love in the Name of Christ Christian organization.
Anita’s come of age, setting out to prove the amazing power of a woman’s faith in God..Her twenty five years of experience triumphing gave her the confidence to record her first CD, “I’ll Fly High” in 1996. Her passion to grow as an artist opened with a new friend introducing her to the guitar. It was love at first sight! She bought a jazz chord book, experimented with the voicings and forged forward with boldness to perform solo Her calling now solidified, she bought a full PA system and booked gigs all over the Jersey shore, tri-state/shore area jazz joints, coffeehouse, rock taverns, churches and Jazz/Blues Festivals. Anita supplemented her income doing photography, writing newspaper columns and winning awards for her art and designs. She is also an accomplished seamstress and fashion designer.
The many memorable events, gigs, benefits and fund-raisers she has performed have centered in and around her stomping ground, Asbury Park, NJ, home of the Stone Pony and The Saint. Authentically covering world class female artists from the blues and jazz of Bonnie Raitt and Alana Miles, to the pop/folk of Jewel and Dido, to the Rock of Alanis Morisette and Melissa Etherideg, she’s also no slouch as a Soulful R&B diva, covering sultry Sade and Toni Braxton covers. Her four-octaved voices croons with the molasses smoothness of classic jazz standard ballad and then will belt out a rock anthems. She’s done it all and all these varied musical influences have made her stylistic singing
"The Creation of Eve", a collaboration of women artists which benefitted the rape care program, "Turning Lives Around" and showcasing at the renowned Bitter End and Kennys Castaways, Manhattan.
Anita refuses to be pinned down and has never compromised her hybrid influences, art or spiritual convictions for the sake of commercialism. The dynamic tension of conflict also taught her to oppose, regroup and focus.
Anita’s testimony blazes with compassion, warmth and passionate activism for justice, equality and changing the current mediocre trend of music, art and the cultural media. The published author has won awards for her photography and art, but these accolades were won with great hardship, sacrifice, opposition and hardship.
Presently, Dystonia, a frightening, Lyme-related condition affecting her main outreach tool, threatens to again postpone her forward momentum. Undaunted that it could permanently impair her voice, she takes her health into her hands, daily researching for holistic approaches via the internet for her recovery. You can’t keep a good girl down!
The recording of her fifth project, Mod Prophet moves along smoothly, with a release date of February 2009 and she anticipates 2009 to culminate with many relevant contributions to the literary, music and art world especially contributing to homeless and women’s shelters, transitional houses and school youth rallies.
