A visiting Italian jazz singer told young Bermudian musicians to stick to their goals and accept rejection as part of the process.

Chiara Civello was in Bermuda to give a concert last Friday and Saturday for CMB Productions at City Hall.

The Royal Gazette spoke with her shortly after she gave a brief workshop to a small group of Bermudian teenagers.

"I would tell young people thinking of going into music to endure," Miss Civello said. "They have to take the many frustrations and the many shut doors as a very fortifying experience rather than as discouraging and disappointing. It is part of the process to be rejected and to be denied. They are all things that happen to make you stronger and to make you more devoted and more determined towards your goals."

Miss Civello released her second album 'The Space Between' in 2007. Her 2005 debut album was 'Last Quarter Moon'.

"Songs are like trains; they take you from one place to another," Miss Civello said of her second album on her website. "This collection of songs, I think, is my train home."

Miss Civello currently lives in Brooklyn, New York but is originally from Rome, Italy. She studied music in Boston at the Berklee College of Music.

"After college, I went home and then moved to New York," she said. "I met this very important producer Russ Titleman. And then we made our first record together.

"Then that was the official start in 2005. Now I am promoting the new record."

This was Miss Civello's first time in Bermuda, but she has lived in Sicily.

"My family are from there," she said. "I just believe that island people are different."

On her website, Miss Civello mentions a particular love of desert islands.

"I tend to adore reconciling myself with space and silence after so much work," she said. "I always go to an island that belongs to Sicily but is totally desert. There are 23 people living there in the winter. I like the silence. I like the ocean. I like to endure and stay and enjoy the space."

She also likes islands in general because of the isolation.

"I think that when you are surrounded by the sea there is a sense of isolation that promotes inner exploration and development," Miss Civello said. "It brings you to the point where you either have to leave or to stay with it. I like that."

The title of her new album refers to a number of things including the spaces between words and musical notes.

"Music can be seen as a progression of silence rather than a progression of notes," she said. "It is about the space between you and a person you love. It is the sea if you are on an island, the space between you and the continent."

She said her new record is more intimate than the last. "It is all acoustic. The writing is probably more immediate and the orchestration is more intimate. That celebrates what is within."

She said the success she has experienced would never have been possible without the move to the United States.

"I would never have done what I have done if I stayed in Italy," she said. "It is just harder to get started there.

"Also, being an artist in Italy, it is more of a rarity than a common thing. In the United States the artistic community is very big and very active and normal."

For more information about Chiara Civello, go to her website at http://www.chiaracivello.com