Vancouver singer and songwriter Tzienna’s debut EP speaks to the turbulence in some young women’s lives. The five songs address yearning for and experiencing love, enduring heartbreak and disillusionment, and then picking up the pieces and carrying on. Thus, the title: “heart, don’t scramble”.
“I think ‘heart don’t scramble’ is like a little reminder, saying ‘things are going to be okay,’ ” Tzienna tells the Toronto Spark over Zoom. “It’s like telling yourself: ‘Heart, don’t scramble.’ Don’t turn into a scrambled egg over silly, emotionally unavailable boys. It is about self-love and learning to ground yourself.”
Tzienna has defined her musical style as “classical crossover”. She adapts her classically trained soprano voice to cool jazz ballads, often infused with a pop sensibility. She sometimes ramps up the romance with elegantly crafted orchestral landscapes.
A prime example is “Café Beau Soir”, a brilliantly arranged bossa nova-inspired number. Her multi-octave vocals—along with the wonderful instrumentation—sound straight out of a Paris nightclub.
“It’s very much about the feeling of when you have a huge crush on some one and you have all these fluttery feelings,” Tzienna says. “It captures that excitement of first feeling the possibility of love—and the shyness that comes with it.”
Tzienna, a Malaysian Canadian, was born and raised on tropical Penang Island. Like many Malaysians with Chinese ancestry, she speaks three languages fluently: English, Mandarin, and Malay. She also sang in Italian, Spanish, German, French, and Latin on her way to earning a voice degree nearly a year ago at the Vancouver Academy of Music.
“I think the challenge for me was bringing that classical background that I have into a context that feels accessible to listeners.”
The EP opens with “Leaf”, which Tzienna wrote when she was in her early 20s. Now in her late 20s, she reworked this composition to honour that early journey and provide hindsight on an earlier relationship. To her, “Leaf” feels the most like first love, so it was the ideal opening chapter on “heart, don’t scramble”.
That’s followed by “All The Time”, which demonstrates her vocal range. Ewan Mac filmed the lyric visualizer with Tzienna singing at dusk on the beach. Musically, she was inspired by The Little Mermaid. However, she chose to rewrite the narrative in this song, which sounds a lot like musical theatre.
“It starts off with a sad mermaid who has been abandoned by a lover—and who sacrificed these things to be on land so that she could chase after someone,” Tzienna states. “But then, she realizes that there is life after heartbreak.”
The fourth song on the EP, “Brimming”, is like an old-time lounge jazz song. And it was inspired by her work on a cover version of “Le Temps des Cerises”. The character Gina (Tokiko Kato) sang this French ballad in the Studio Ghibli film Porco Rosso, which is one of Tzienna’s favourite films.
“I did some vocal layers for it and from those vocal layers came the melody for ‘Brimming’. That’s what kicked it off,” she says.
The lyrics in “Brimming” embody the feeling of being heartbroken. The lyric visualizer reinforces this mood as Tzienna sits in the back of an Uber at night gazing out the window.
Tzienna admits that she finds it easier to sing difficult, flashy, classical music than the simpler and more intimate songs on “heart, don’t scramble”. Not only does she reveal her vulnerability on the EP, but she must also navigate a broader vocal spectrum. There are moments when she expresses herself in a “spoken chest voice”, and then there are moments when she’s singing a run of high notes.
The final song on the EP, “Ticket to your warm bear embrace”, has an upbeat feel. The lyric video shot by Ewan Mac shows scenes around Vancouver, including the Gastown Steam Clock and train tracks near Granville Island.
“This is the feeling of falling in love with someone’s hug and then remembering that someone could fall in love with yours too.”
To learn more about Tzienna, visit her website, watch her YouTube channel, or follow her on Instagram @tziennaa. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
