ABOUT LENA MORRIS
Background
Born on the 20th of January 1998 (22 years old) as Helena Ekmekdje in Brussels (Belgium) Lena Morris is coming from a French family with Russian and Armenian origins. The first years of her life were split between Belgium, France and Spain, due to her father’s professional obligations.
In 2005, her family settles in Hong Kong, Lena is only 7. She will live in this cosmopolite city of China for 11 years, where she will follow an uneventful schooling at the French International School, always with her twin brother by her side, and will graduate in Literature (with Honours) in 2016.
Besides Hong Kong, where she makes friends from the whole world, Lena discovers Asia’s riches in all their diversity: China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia. She learns the harshness of life, the difference, she studies calligraphy, learns a few uncanny words in exotic languages… all this forges her character from very young, she learns to ally resilience and determination.
At the age of 18, Lena leaves her family and her hometown, Hong Kong. She moves to Brighton, England, in order to start her studies of Songwriting at BIMM Brighton.
New country, new life: Helena Ekmekdje becomes Lena Morris. This stage name is inspired from two of her nicknames: ‘Lena’ being the Russian diminutive of ‘Helena’ and ‘Morris’ being the English version of the French name ‘Maurice’ used by her friends and family for her tomboyish attitude.
Lena has been living in Brighton since 2016 and obtains her Bachelor in Songwriting (BIMM, University of Sussex) in 2019.
Musical Background
Lena Morris is from an artistic family. Her mother is an acting teacher. Her father is a multi-instrumentalist musician who studied at the Conservatory of Versailles. Her twin brother Alex accompanied her first ventures on stage by playing the guitar. Her grandfather from her mother’s side was an actor and her great-great grandfather from her father’s side was a famous Armenian music composer, who composed one of the most famous traditional Armenian folk songs in the late 19th century. When she was 4, her parents pushed her to learn the piano. Since then she has maintained an on and off relationship with the piano, self-taught and dilettante.
The Hong Kong Years
At the age of 14, Lena listens to The Beatles in repeat. The song ‘Oh! Darling’ from the Abbey Road album “stops her heart”. She has decided: she will be Paul McCartney or nothing!
Lena buys her first bass, an Hofner Violin (of course) and works relentlessly. A couple of months later she sings and plays the song ‘Oh! Darling’ at the legendary music bar in Hong Kong: The Wanch, accompanied by her father and brother.
Pushed forward by her first round of applause, Lena understands music will guide her life from now on. She wants to learn, discover and progress. She listens to everything, learns the guitar, starts playing piano again, learns the ukulele, takes singing lessons, writes fragments of songs, meets a lot of musicians asking to play with her. She sings a lot, plays a lot, and writes more and more.
Alternately a singer, a singer/bass player, a bass player or even a back vocalist, Lena collaborates with dozens of musicians, amateurs and professionals. During her High School years she performs publicly more then 70 times.
Hired to sing advertisements in Asia, Lena discovers the recording studios and production. Shortly after, she decides to produce her first single, without any budget. “Cool Cool Cat” is the first song of a fresh teenager. With this song, Lena unveils her excessive passion for cats and a deadpan sense of humour. The music video (filmed between friends a few weeks before flying off to Brighton) is a tribute to the Hong Kong of her childhood.
The Brighton Years
As soon as Lena sets foot in England, she opens up to other music genres, she searches herself, experiments, meets a lot of new musicians. In the year 2017, Lena released 3 singles that can appear disparate, but they all share a clear rupture with the Hong Kong years: ‘Break My Heart’ is a Pop song under Reggae influence (Lena listened a lot to The Police at the time she was writing it). ‘Dearest Dreamiest Dead’ is an intense tribute to the victims of terror attacks around the world, (Lena was particularly touched by the Paris attacks). And ‘Secretly Jacked’ with its crypto-erotic lyrics is a sign of her music evolving towards Blues-Rock.
For her first 2 years in Brighton, Lena played less then 10 gigs. In these two years, beside the time she has been spending on exploring composition and studio work, Lena has also been suffering of an unexplainable fear of the stage. She is not embarrassed to openly share this state, and believes this fight against her dark self is an essential part of her musician’s journey. Her new single explicitly speaks of this topic.
Today, Lena has won over her fears. Now feeling in peace, she is back on stage and plays her music in front of her audience again.
Lena Morris released her latest single ‘Never (Is An Awfully Long Time)’ in May 2019. On this unmistakable Blues-Rock music, her lyrics are reaching out to people who suffer from low self-esteem. For this single, written by her as usual, Lena Morris has dug even deeper in her creativity. Beyond getting involved in the production (with her producer Steven Bamidele), for the first time Lena created a sleeve’s artwork and directed the music video (out 17th May), taking full control of her work’s visual identity. She is granted a double page in the French magazine of Hong Kong Trait-D’Union, a whole page in number 86 of Bassiste Magazine (France), gets an article in the French newspaper Paris-Normandie and gets interviewed for BIMM Brighton’s blog and Listen To Discover, another english blog.
Current events
Since 2016, Lena has been collaborating with a lot English musicians like Rich Beahan. This incredible Jazz pianist, sometimes associated to the Paul Black Band and The Undead Musicians, played on her singles ‘Dearest Dreamiest Dead’ and ‘Secretly Jacked’. In return, Lena is Rich Beahan’s back vocalist on three of his latest singles: ’What Did You Do’, ‘Somewhere To Be’ and ‘It’s Not Real’. Lena and Rich work together on each others original work and gig in pubs together with Megan Hill on back vocals. Now that Lena has obtained her degree in Songwriting, she decides to start writing for other artists like the alternative rock band, Vertigo, where Megan Hill is the lead singer.
2019 touching to an end, Lena writes, records, gigs and collaborates in order to prepare a roaring beginning to 2020.
Lena Morris starts 2020 with gigs in Brighton. Sadly with the Covid outbreak all her spring gigs are cancelled so she decides to record new songs by herself and with other producers during the summer after the lockdown. She is currently working on the release of her 1st EP, coming out early 2021.
Musical Influences
Raised in a family where music had all the space it needed, Lena Morris found in the English music scene from 1960-70 her musical markers (The Beatles, Queen, David Bowie).
These last years, she also became very sensitive to more classic or Jazz artists (Tchaikovsky, Rickie Lee Jones, Charles Aznavour), influences we can notice on her latest productions.