Paz Lenchantin

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Paz Lenchantin (born December 12, 1973 in Mar del Plata, Argentina) is an Argentine-American musician of French and Armenian ancestry who came to Los Angeles, California with her family at the age of four.

She speaks fluent Spanish and English. As her parents, Mario Merdirossian and Ana Lia Lenchantin were both professional concert pianists, she was motivated to follow their path and began playing piano at age five. She then took violin lessons at age eight and taught herself how to play guitar at age twelve. Led Zeppelin's bassist John Paul Jones later influenced her to play bass which became her forte in her music career.

[edit] Musical career

Lenchantin joined Billy Howerdel, Josh Freese, Troy Van Leeuwen, and Maynard James Keenan in forming the band A Perfect Circle. She contributed to their albums, Mer de Noms (strings, bass guitar, and back-up vocals) and Thirteenth Step (co-writing the song "Gravity"). Lenchantin later left the group to join with Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlain, Matt Sweeney, and David Pajo to form Zwan. In 2002, Lenchantin, with Melissa Auf Der Maur (Smashing Pumpkins/Hole), Samantha Maloney, and Radio Sloan (The Need) created a new band called The Chelsea. The all-female supergroup played only one show before going their separate ways. Lenchantin contributed strings to bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur's solo album, on the track "My Foggy Notion". Lenchantin returned to play strings and piano with A Perfect Circle in recording their cover album eMOTIVe, released November 2, 2004 and debuting at #2 on the Billboard 200. She also contributed a solo cover of the song "The Hollow" to A Perfect Circle's CD/DVD release, aMOTION.

Lenchantin also appeared on Queens of the Stone Age's album, Songs for the Deaf. She has played with David Pajo in Papa M, and contributed fiddle on the Silver Jews record, Tanglewood Numbers. She has toured with RTX/Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux. She has also contributed to and toured with Jarboe of Swans. Lenchantin also played bass on Brightblack Morning Light's 2006 self-titled album on Matador Records. She worked with director Michael Mann on his film Miami Vice^{[citation needed]} contributing violin on several scenes.

Since 2005, Lenchantin has been collaborating with Entrance on their album Prayer Of Death, as co- producer as well as contributing bass and violin. She also appeared on ENTRANCE previous album "Wandering Stranger" (2004).

Throughout her career as a member of numerous prominent bands Paz has found time to write/produced two of her own solo albums currently available on her MySpace page; Songs For Luci (2006) Yellow mY skYcaptain(2000).

[edit] Solo discography

• Yellow mY skYcaptain (2001)
• Songs for Luci (2006)

[edit] External links

• Paz Lenchantin official website
• Official MySpace
• ENTRANCE official website
• A Perfect Circle official website
• Paz Lenchantin interview at BassGirls.com