Alexandra Maquet (, born 27 September 1988), known professionally as Alma, is a French singer and songwriter. She represented France in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 with the song "Requiem", finishing twelfth.
Early life
Alexandra Maquet (Alma) was born 27 September 1988 in Lyon as the eldest of four daughters to businessman Alain Maquet and the painter and contemporary artist Marie-Pierre Maquet, a.k.a. MPM.
Alma started singing and playing the piano during childhood. When she was 16 years old, the family moved to Miami. After spending a year at an American high school, she decided to move back to France, on her own, to study at IESEG School of Management in Lille where she obtained a master's degree in Business Administration and Management in 2011. During her studies she spent more than a year as an exchange student at FEA-USP in São Paulo, Brazil where she learned Portuguese. After her studies at IESEG, she was assistant manager at Abercrombie & Fitch in Milan during 2011, and moved thereafter to Brussels where she started to compose.
In addition to French, she speaks English, Italian, and Portuguese.
Career
2012–15: Early career
In 2012, Alma started her music career by publishing one of her first compositions, "Gone", dedicated to the memory of a close friend from her elementary school Collège de Marcq who had died in a traffic accident 2009. The song was recorded at Studio Dada and posted on YouTube on 14 January 2012. It was followed by the release of the song "Again" on 3 February 2012 and "Elsewhere" on 19 May 2012. The songs got positive reviews in the French online magazines Bulle Sonore and La Bande Sonore.
Alma gave her first public performances on 13 May and 3 June 2012 at Rooster's Bar in Brussels accompanied by the guitarist Alain Goossens with a mix of both covers and her own compositions. Their covers of Lana del Rey's "Video Games", Tears for Fears’ "Mad World" and Nadeah's "Odile" were recorded at Avalon Studios in Brussels and posted on YouTube and her newly started official Facebook page. She started studying at ACP la Manufacture Chanson to train her singing and composing techniques and gave training concerts at Les Jeudis Chanson in autumn 2012.
Alma was discovered by Chris Corazza and Donatien Guillon at Chic Acoustic which led to a radio broadcast on 10 December 2012 as well as an interview and a one-hour concert at Le Malibv in Paris on 12 December 2012.
Alma had a concert at Le Connetable in Paris on 27 April 2013 and on 14 June 2013 she participated in the closing concert of ACP la Manufacture Chanson at restaurant Les Trois Baudets in Paris. During this time she also worked with promotion. Téléssonne broadcast a video portrait with extracts from her songs. She also started to use the artist name Alma and Vigie Discographique made a video interview and recorded four songs "Libido", "Mr Unsatisfaction", "Sitting down" and "What do you want from me" in the Pixel Room Studio, Le Pré-Saint-Gervais, that were published on YouTube. She released a cover of Julia Stone and Benjamin Biolay "Let´s Forget" with Benjamin Ollive on 29 June 2013. On 19 September 2013 she was a guest in the program Ça reste entre nous in RadioVL, giving an interview where she promoted her first major concert at the concert boat La Péniche in Lille on 27–28 September 2013.
Edoardo Grassi, who at the time worked for Carson Productions, invited her to join the weekly television show Les Chansons d'abord on France 3 hosted by Natasha St-Pier, where she participated regularly from 1 December 2013 to 15 June 2014. In her first program she performed the song "Entre nous" and got praise from Celine Dion. In December 2013 a successful crowd funding project at Kissbankers was started to record the duet "Trinquons" together with Benjamin Ollive at Studio Davout and the single was released 26 February 2014. She met the composer and singer Nazim Khaled, on the show Les Chansons d'abord in early 2014, and they decided to start a musical collaboration. During the remaining of 2014 several songs were composed, among them the song "Requiem", which was written by Nazim Khaled in late October 2014 and first performed by Alma at the festival for emerging French performers La Créative in La Bellevilloise de Paris on 24 January 2015. In July and August 2014, Alma was an actor in Odah & Dako's online comedy video series Punchlife.