"Why music?"
"Why breathing?"
Allison Crowe's simple reply to this interviewer's question says it best.
"Allison Crowe has a voice to fall in love with," says UK-based music industry source Record of the Day. "She is from Vancouver Island in Canada, descended from Irish and Manx stock. She's exactly the sort of artist who can make serious headway on her own label and that's just what she's doing."
"I grew up surrounded by music. There was a lot of jazz, classical and rock, in both my immediate and my extended families," says Crowe, 23.
Her first public performance was at age six ~ belting out a big hit of the Jazz age, Ja-da (Ja-da Jing Jing Jing!). In her pre-teens, Allison Crowe heard Nina Simone (a genre-buster of another generation) and Chet Baker albums spinning at home. She carried this music into her school band and music theatre studies. She found a coach to help harness her powerful vocal instrument and teachers to encourage her playing on piano, flute, bass and drums. By then, her parents' albums had been joined by her own collection of recordings by new artists like Ani DiFranco, Pearl Jam, Tori Amos and Counting Crows, making for an eclecticism evident today in her music.
"Everyone I was surrounded by inspired me in different ways," she notes. "They inspired me to play better, work harder, enjoy what music and being a musician can be, while at the same time being realistic about all that it can bring. Good and bad. Also, not to let it go to your head at any time, under any circumstances. And that can mean either getting a huge inflated ego, or, being overly hard on yourself."
By age 15, Allison Crowe was playing to ever-widening crowds in coffee-houses and bars up and down her island. "I love singing for
people," she says. "It's a way to connect and share with others, which is very important for emotional survival. Communication is crucial. Just
being able to do what I do, to write and sing and perform, makes me feel not only alive, but incredibly lucky. Knowing at any moment everything could change, I don't take one second for granted."
In 1998, she won the VIEX Island Songbird Competition, topping 17 other vocalists. Her growth since has been steady and remarkable. In 2002, the same year Crowe completed her first national tour as headliner, she was a featured guest artist on the website of recording artist Jewel. Jewel'
s site stated: "Beautifully moody or riotously rocking, Allison Crowe creates piano-based music of transcendent quality."
Combining classical virtuosity with the improvisational qualities of jazz and the gale strength of gospel and rock at its most visceral, she's been called "a force of nature" and "fearless" by critics who've found her unmistakable voice impossible to pigeonhole. As one journalist said of Crowe's original sound: "Make your own comparisons, then forget them."
Through hundreds of public performances in coffeehouses, clubs, cabarets, theatres, concert halls, on radio and tv, regionally and nationally, Allison Crowe is building her reputation as an one-of-a-kind talent. The foundation is her distinctive vocal timbre, phrasing and emotional delivery, her rhythmically propulsive piano-playing and her risk-taking songs and interpretations. The internet is also helping to carry her words and music to a global audience. (Her songs are consistently among the most downloaded tracks at Amazon.com and they've recently become available on iTunes et al.)
Allison Crowe has comfortably shared a stage with jazz pianist/vocalist Diana Krall and had her version of a Beatles song placed on a tribute album alongside tracks by punk/DIY legends such as Sylvain Sylvain (of the New York Dolls) and the late Dee Dee Ramone. Two, unique, one-hour concert television specials, "Inside Pandora's Box: Allison Crowe" and "Allison Crowe: Tidings", have been broadcast across Canada. Her live performances thrill audiences of all ages and she's equally at home behind a grand piano in a soft-seat theatre as she is rocking out in a juke-joint.
"Soulful. Alive. Joyous. Grievous. Real, true, music is what I want to make," she says.
To that end, in late 2003 Allison Crowe launched her own label, Rubenesque Records Ltd., with the release of "Lisa's Song + 6 Songs" ~ a collection of songs recorded live-off-the-floor over the preceding couple of years. This EP garnered fans and positive press.
"Secrets", the singer songwriter's debut full-length album was released to wide-spread critical and public acclaim in Summer 2004. Collected Sounds named Secrets one of the "Top CDs of 2004", saying: "Allison Crowe is an amazing talent and the music world would be doing itself a huge favor if it paid her the attention she deserves. Get her CDs now, and you can say you knew her 'when'."
"Tidings", a collection of songs for the season of joy and peace was Rubenesque's next, Winter, release. This album was one of the best-reviewed holiday albums of 2004, and received raves in print coast-to-coast from critics who labelled Tidings "sublime", "marvelously thoughtful", "truly transcendent", "a triumph", and "the Yuletide find of the year." Summing up the collective response was this reviewer's declaration: "Following so closely after Secrets, released on Crowe's own label a few months ago, Tidings confirms the arrival of a recording artist who has what it takes to climb to the highest echelons of Canadian, if not international, pop music."
Secrets and Tidings are available through Festival Distribution (Canada's premiere purveyor of jazz, blues, folk, roots and world music) and through a range of online retailers. | | Get the Flash Player to see this player.
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