Leandra Ophelia Dax (real name: Olga Telnow , born as: Olga Wladimirowna Te… Read Full Bio ↴Leandra Ophelia Dax (real name: Olga Telnow , born as: Olga Wladimirowna Telnowa ; born December 19, 1981 in Minsk , Belarusian SSR ) is a pianist , keyboardist , singer and songwriter with Belarusian and German citizenship.
Olga Telnowa was born in Minsk, Belarus (then the USSR ) as the only child of an English lecturer and a physics engineer.
At the age of five she began to play the theme songs of her favorite series on the piano , at the age of six she was admitted to an elite music school, where she studied piano, classical composition , music theory and choir .
The general school she attended also specialized in promoting musical talent. Her perfect pitch was quickly discovered and her creativity encouraged: the music school allowed her to take part in composition competitions. When she finally won first place in one of the competitions at the age of nine, she got a scholarship at the Moscow Conservatory . However, her parents persuaded the jury to transfer the scholarship to an adequate academy in the city of Minsk because of the young age of their daughter .
Then Olga Telnowa was placed at the Minsk Conservatory, where she began a junior course in piano and composition. In 1996 the family fled to the German Ruhr area . The then successful young pianist tried to continue her junior studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen . Due to language barriers, the 14-year-old only succeeded in doing this after two unsuccessful entrance exams. In the same year she took first place in Jugend composed with the classical piece Variations on a theme of its own and a year later with freedom of variation for a keyboard cattle .
At the age of fourteen, Olga Telnow discovered her love for contemporary rock and punk music. She started wearing her hair brightly and dressing funky. Eventually she left the University of the Arts to take electric guitar lessons. After three years of abstinence from the piano, she made up her mind to take her diploma in piano and composition at the same time as graduating from high school .
At the age of seventeen, Telnow founded the riot-grrrl band Venusbabydoll , in which she processed influences such as Hole and Nirvana . During a two-week internship in a recording studio , the classical pianist developed an interest in recording technology and got to know her long-time mentor and friend. Rya, then under contract with FAME Recordings , took on her by making the first demo recordings of Venusbabydoll and later including the songwriter in her live band as a keyboardist.
Over the next three years, tours with Mila Mar , Last Instance and appearances with Corvus Corax followed . In the meantime, Telnow wrote new pieces of her own, which she describes as "selected from extreme situations", founded the Leandra project and completed her Bachelor of Arts in social and educational psychology.
When Rya withdrew from the public eye, the pianist took on an engagement as keyboard player for the synth rock band Jesus on Extasy under the pseudonym Ophelia Dax . This stage name is made up of one of the characters in the tragedy Hamlet by W. Shakespeare and the character Jadzia Dax from the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .
The band Jesus on Extasy was under contract with Drakkar Entertainment , toured Europe over the next few years and shared the festival stages with Nightwish , Tool , Skinny Puppy , And One , Unheilig , Last Instance and Marilyn Manson, among others .
In 2008 the artist finally got a contract with Drakkar Entertainment to release her first solo album Metamorphine under the name Leandra with the Sony BMG distributor . The album includes a duet with Sven Friedrich ( Zeraphine , Dreadful Shadows ). Her longtime friends of the band last instance invited her as a singer and pianist to her acoustic album The White Song and the accompanying The White Tour .
In 2010, Olga Telnow accepted an engagement with the band Diary of Dreams under the pseudonym DAX . Due to personal differences within the band, the collaboration only lasted a few months.
At the end of the same year she joined Apoptygma Berzerk , with whom she competes in the second part of Unheilig's “Great Freedom” tour . In 2011, the keyboard player also appeared at the same time as the cashier band and accompanied Frei.Wild's "XMas" tour on the piano. In 2012 Leandra Ophelia Dax joined Die Priester , Santiano and Roterfeld as keyboard player .
Olga Telnowa describes the solo debut album Metamorphine of her project Leandra as her secret diary. The pieces are a reflection of extreme situations in her life. Stylistically, the music moves between Tori Amos , PJ Harvey and Massive Attack .

Projects and collaborations
2003–2006: Keyboard player with Rya. Tour with Mila Mar and Last Instance.
2007–Dato: Keyboarderin bei Jesus on Extasy
2008 – date: Keyboard player in Andy Brings' band (formerly: Sodom , The Traceelords )
February – July 2010: Keyboard player with Diary of Dreams, for the tour with Unheilig.
2008: Duet with Sven Friedrich ( Zeraphine , Dreadful Shadows )
2008: Piano and vocals on the album The White Song by the band Last Instance and on the subsequent The White Tour
2008: Club single Noisy Awareness , remixed by Chai Deveraux, guitarist of Jesus on Extasy.
2009: Duet with Sid from The Pussybats on The Most Beautiful Tales End Sadly and Dance With the Devils , both on the album Famous Last Songs .
2010: Live keyboard at Apoptygma Berzerk for the Unheilig Support Tour Große Freiheit II .
2011: Background singer at Frei.Wild - only assholes around me
2012: Live Keyboard at Santiano
2013: Background singer with Frei.Wild on the album Still

Son of Venus
Leandra Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴

Inhaling the smell of your hair
Cloudy smoke turns into dizzy air
Like salty taste of your skin and of soap
A drop of sweat is running down your back so pure

Rain falls down on my knees in the street
Hair on your neck is standing so still
May I try to raise a smile on your face

Son of Venus, my muse, goodbye

The deep embrace has not been lasting for long
Silence burnt your skin, your strange eyes got so cold

Paper dishes fill my wooden floor
but it

Overall Meaning

doesn't feel like home anymore

Leandra's song Son of Venus is a hauntingly beautiful ballad about longing for a lost love. The opening verse paints a sensual picture of the singer inhaling the smell of their lover's hair and feeling intoxicated by the scent. The use of the metaphor "cloudy smoke turns into dizzy air" suggests a sense of disorientation and confusion in the singer's mind, perhaps reflecting their emotional state. The salty taste of skin and soap is a powerful sensory detail that emphasizes the intimacy and physical closeness between the singer and their lover. The drop of sweat running down the lover's back is described as "so pure," perhaps implying that this fleeting moment of closeness is something cherished and treasured by the singer.

In the following verse, the imagery shifts to rain falling down on the singer's knees in the street, while the lover's hair on their neck stands still. The singer longs to bring a smile to their lover's face, but ultimately they must say goodbye. The use of the phrase "son of Venus" evokes a sense of divine beauty and perfection, and suggests that the lover may have been almost otherworldly in their allure. Despite this, the singer is resigned to their fate and must let go of their lover.

The final lines of the verse bring a sense of emptiness and loss, as the singer describes paper dishes filling their wooden floor, but it no longer feeling like home. This could be interpreted as a metaphor for the absence of their lover and the sense of displacement and loneliness that comes with it.

Contributed by Eli J. Suggest a correction in the comments below.

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