About

Phia Exiner is a composer, musician and songwriter of unusual breadth. Originally training as a jazz pianist, she achieved a cult following during her time living in Europe with her unique use of the kalimba (thumb piano) accompanied by loop and effect pedals. Since returning to Melbourne, Australia she has founded and creatively directs 500 piece choir Melbourne Indie Voices as well as composing and arranging for film and television and releasing two albums under her own name. The thread which runs through all her work is her authentic and sincere voice, and playful and expert musicality.

Pick Me Up (Don’t Put Me Down) is the feature track from her upcoming third album, When I’m Holding You, I’m Holding Me. It showcases the world-class band at the heart of the album, recorded live with Exiner on piano, Tony Floyd (the Black Sorrows) on drums, Jonathan Zion (Deborah Conway, Lior) on double bass and featuring Gus Rigby (Fools) on saxophones/flute and produced with Nick Huggins (the Dirty Three). Pick Me Up is a slow burning meditation on the joy and grief new motherhood brings, the shedding of old identities and the tentative reaching to something new. and showcases Exiner’s jazz-trained origins with a Brad Mehldau-esque piano solo closing out the track.

When I’m Holding You, I’m Holding Me shows an artist confident in herself, where she is and where she’s come from, in her return to the piano, the instrument of her youth and the instrument her mother played to her. Written in the brief snatches of time when her son napped in the year after his birth, through sleep deprivation and the deepening understanding of herself as she grew into becoming a mother. The songs of When I’m Holding You, I’m Holding Me map this singular time, the slow unfurling of discovery, of her son and herself.