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Sarah Slean is one of this country's most talented and dedicated
artists. A singer-songwriter with a rich soprano, her remarkable voice
is strong and clear, but also vulnerable, and she plays piano with a
captivating sense of drama.
The blue-eyed chanteuse has released
four studio albums, been nominated for three Juno awards and written
quite a few gems, including Lucky Me, Day One and Get Home.
And this brings me to an event that actually had something to do with this publication. We were, after all, celebrating Canadian music and what better way to do that than with a nice intimate Songwriters’ Circle at The Centre of Performing Arts. It was hosted by none other than Canada’s finest singer-songwriter Hawksley Workman, and included the likes of Doc Walker, Jacob Hoggard, and Sarah Slean...
Singer-songwriter Sarah Slean has found a way to turn the current economic downfall into profitable ticket sales, press and a hopefully generous environmental donation. Well, at least from fashion-savvy folk, that is...
Words first then music, or music and then words? The creative process is anything but predictable.
Some JUNO nominees pace through their apartments, others hunker down at a studio, while others prefer Parisian apartments, remote cabins, stairwells or even bathrooms to fuel their creative process.
There's no one formula for successful songwriting, but how do Juno nominees find their muse?
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Toronto might have been buried in snow this past weekend, but Sarah Slean's annual festive two-night stint at the Enwave Theatre warmed many hearts.
Saturday evening saw Slean clad in a dazzling green dress (that her friend "the mermaid" gave her) performing with some of the cabaret chanteuse's closest musical friends. The Roaring Girl Cabaret's Miranda Mulholland, Gentlemen Reg, NQ Arbuckle, Royal Wood and the Blue Spruce String Quartet added gorgeous flourishes and arrangements to Slean's extensive repertoire...
7. Sarah Slean - Baroness - Canada's siren returns with her strongest album yet, filled with haunting piano and her pure voice. The single Get Home, about infidelity, is incredibly moving and almost too personal.
"My apartment looks like a manuscript store that's exploded," Sarah Slean cries. "Scores are everywhere, and there are stacks and stacks of charts." Her fans made a list, and the elegant cabaret popster is checking it at least twice. For a pair of concerts (tomorrow and Saturday at the Enwave Theatre), the classically trained pianist asked her fans to suggest a set list by sending in requests for old Slean favourites, cover tunes, seasonal chestnuts as well as selections from this year's The Baroness and the just-out EP of extra songs, The Baroness Redecorates.
Sarah Slean is no rookie in the music game, so it's odd that she's only now making her first appearance at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Then again, she's no longer the bright-eyed ingénue, but rather a calculating adult artist, so maybe the timing's just finally right.
3. Sarah Slean. Her voice is like velvet and her lyrics are so her. I love artists who are distinctly themselves, and they're not trying to be something else.
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As I sat with singer/songwriter Sarah Slean in the dining room of a Vancouver hotel, it was difficult to imagine that less than twenty-four hours before, I had witnessed this now quiet, and slender woman cavorting about the stage, while she performed her first of two concerts in this west coast city. Now she appears reflective and delicate, almost like a porcelain doll, but during her performance, she rocked out on the piano at moments, while at other times she kibitzed with her fans while singing in cabaret style.
Sarah Slean does not simply walk on stage to begin her live performances. That would be far too ordinary. Instead, she peeks from behind curtains and lets her band play a few bars before slinking over to her grand piano, smiling as if she knows something the audience doesn’t. She then settles herself by promptly kicking off her high heels — a tell-tale indication that the singer will hold nothing back and have a good time while doing it.
Sarah Slean makes melancholy fun! That should be the tack Slean's publicists take when promoting her shows, it really should - after all, sadness turned Nick Drake into a big star, didn't it? Okay, okay, scratch that idea - still, the fact is that Slean is at her best when mapping out the tribulations of the human heart.
Toronto songstress Sarah Slean may have given her new fifth album the name of her alter-ego, The Baroness, but the personality explored on the disc is decidedly her own. It is her most lyrically direct and confessional yet, as she explained to Tandem recently...
Whatever happened to the renaissance artist? Y’know, those multifaceted talents who could just as easily sing an aria as paint a portrait, or effortlessly toss off lines of lyrical poetry in between composing tricky melodies. Today’s culture, as fizzy and consumable as the “pop” prefix that usually precedes it, doesn’t exactly encourage great feats of artistry.
You can write a love song, or, if you are Sarah Slean, you can live them passionately, let them take over your performance, connect with the most expressive words opening the doors to your emotions. Few artists exist with their songs so intensely. Slean seems to be her material, rather than just its creator.
Sarah Slean is a true romantic. Not the gooey, puppy-eyed kind, but the kind likely to glide on stage swathed in velvet. As the catalogue deconstructions on 2006's Orphan Music confirmed, she can make hearts melt with just a piano and her crimson-coloured voice. Still, she's smart enough to build a career on more than one style of dreamer's drama.
"Get Home", the tortured first single from Sarah Slean's new disc, The Baroness, will resonate with anyone who's had to deal with a cheater. "Liars and cowards," the tiny, elegant Slean declares with the conviction of one who's been stabbed in the back a few times herself, her vicious condemnation deployed in a deceptively sweet voice.
Little Miss Slean is all grown up and she's returned with her fifth major label release The Baroness. "She is what I can be when fear and courage mix perfectly," the pianist said introducing her latest effort. "The baroness is my guide, my muse, my broken and triumphant-self. She is a wild woman in a red dress."
Sarah Slean has been beguiling audiences with her intriguing and provocative music for years. March 11, 2008 marked the much anticipated release of her fifth studio recording, The Baroness. Slean is not only an incredibly talented singer, songwriter, poet, and actor but she is also currently a music and philosophy student studying at the University of Toronto.