Wayzata H.S. Grad's Music Career off to Acclaimed Start

Nina Yasmineh is living her dream.

Springing from low-key Wayzata, the 20-year-old aspiring musician is successfully navigating college life on the East Coast with notable success in her music career.  

“I remember one time I told a classmate at Wayzata that I wanted to be a professional musician, and their response was that wanting to be a professional musician was the equivalent of wanting to be a ‘fairy princess.’ Just not realistic,” Yasmineh said.

But for Yasmineh, the relative conventionality of her hometown and the perceived difficulty breaking into the music industry wasn’t enough to complicate a simple decision to pursue her passion.

“I’ve always loved to sing,” says Yasmineh of her early start with music, “and I took piano lessons for 10 years. I started writing songs when I was 12 or 13 and picked up guitar to accompany myself.”

She refers to her beginnings as “humble.” When younger, she performed a number of times at school or at church. She first started performing solo and playing her own songs at The Bookcase.

Yasmineh graduated from Wayzata High School in 2009. This year she’ll enter her junior year at New York University, where she’s pursuing a concentration in European studies.

Yasmineh says she has struck a balance between her academics and music and has drawn a clear dividing line between the two.

“Everyone asks why I didn’t study music,” she said. “But I didn’t want to major in music performance or music business or recording. I was afraid that studying music so intensely would take the enjoyment out of writing and singing and playing for me. I chose European studies because it allows me to study a variety of things that interest me, including philosophy, art, politics, literature, etc.”

While she may not be a music major, Yasmineh does admit that her desire to chase a music career in New York City played a role in her choice to attend NYU.

Certainly, the school’s location in Greenwich Village and surrounding locales make good inspirational grounds for an aspiring singer-songwriter. Washington Square Park, at the heart of Yasmineh’s campus, is often full of performing musicians when the weather is nice.

She has been performing in NYC throughout her time in Manhattan. She’s played alone and with a band at a number of downtown venues, among them the Bitter End, the National Underground and Rockwood Music Hall.

As far as differences between the music scenes of Minnesota and New York, Yasmineh says both have their merits and she has no favorite.

“There is a lot going on with the music scenes in both cities,” she said. “New York is more diverse in the types of music being performed live. The Twin Cities music scene feels like a more tightly knit community, I think in part because people tend to live here for longer periods of time, whereas in NYC, people seem like they are always coming and going.”

Yasmineh has been called “sophisticated and fresh” by Teen Vogue magazine and gets frequent praise from music bloggers. She will be studying abroad in London, another breeding ground for famous musicians, this coming semester. While there, she plans to find some places at which to perform and hopes to meet other musicians interested in playing with her.

Yasmineh says she’s been influenced by much of the music her mother (singer-songwriter Courtney Yasmineh) listened to when Yasmineh was little – “Lots of Bob Dylan and '90s Alternative Rock, Counting Crows, The Wallflowers, early Sheryl Crow…”

Yasmineh just played at the Aster Café in Minneapolis in July and says it’s now one of her favorite performance venues in the Twin Cities Metro area.

She also points to recording as one her favorite things to do when in Minnesota. She records at the Brewhouse Recording Studio near Uptown Minneapolis with producer Rob Genadek.

She defines her genre as Pop-Rock, and says that her songs reflect whatever she’s thinking about or what’s going on in her life when she’s writing.

She’s in the midst of working on her new album, and plans to release a single at the end of August. The entire album will be finished in January 2012.

More on Nina can be found on her MySpace and Facebook pages. Music from her EP album, “Real Good Thing,” is available on iTunes.

Her next scheduled performance is Thursday at the Turf Club in Minneapolis.