Review of Bedroom Voice at girlsingers.org

Bedroom Voice recently got reviewed by Doug Boynton at girlsingers.org and I’m thrilled with his assessment of the album. Here’s an excerpt:

This is a gentle recording, but it demands active listening. And because of that, I quickly came to appreciate the porcelain nature of Fawn Fritzen’s voice, full of subtle blues and honeyed desires.

“Honeyed desires.” Isn’t that wonderfully evocative?

Read the rest on the girlsingers.org website.

My (classical) roots are showing

Here’s a blast from the past. 17 years ago (when I was 17!) I lived in Germany in the gap year after finishing high school.

I had given up my piano studies in my graduating year of high school, so my chops were rusty. Luckily, in Germany I had a wonderful piano teacher (Nuri El-Ruheibany, conducting the orchestra in the video below) who gave me all sorts of amazing performance opportunities, including a chance to learn and perform one of Haydn’s piano concertos for piano and orchestra.

I was recently able to salvage some of the aging VHS tapes in my collection (thanks to my lovely friend Nita *waves*) and the first thing I salvaged was this video of the concerto performance. This is the first movement of three in Haydn’s piano concerto in D Major, the “Vivace”. I performed all three movements of this delightful musical work.

It’s not a perfect performance, and the colours on the video have faded over time, but I’m proud of what I accomplished as a young musician and sometimes wish I had the time to spare to revisit my classical roots in a more serious way. There’s always so much to learn and so much room to grow, so one has to pick an area to focus on for a while. Right now, that isn’t classical piano. But I still love it.

For your (digital) listening pleasure

Easter has come and gone and even in Whitehorse there are signs of spring! Now that I’m feeling a little rested it’s time to turn my attention back to the real world.

For today, just a quick update that Bedroom Voice is now available for digital download on CD Baby and on iTunes. In fact, it’s available in digital format a whole bunch of other places, too, and my head is spinning a little because I can’t keep up with all the ways there now are to buy music. (I know I sound old-fashioned…)

So, for you digital junkies out there, other places you can find Bedroom Voice are:

• Amazon MP3
• Google Play
• eMusic
• Rhapsody
• MySpace Music
• Spotify
• Rdio
• Simfy
• Nokia
• Last.fm
• Xbox Music (formerly Zune)
• MediaNet (formerly MusicNet)
• MOG
• Tradebit
• GreatIndieMusic
• 24-7
• 7digital
• MyxeriHeartRadio
• Deezer
• Omnifone
• Sony Music Unlimited
• Bloom.fm
• Muve Music

Is your head spinning yet?

Album release day +1

Wow, yesterday was such a magical day! True, there was that glitch when I drove downtown to pick up a couple of last-minute items and when I got back to the car, it wouldn’t start… but fortunately, Whitehorse is small enough that a 15-dollar cab ride took care of that problem. And what would a big day be without some kind of minor crisis?

Bedroom Voice is now available in Whitehorse stores (Dean’s Strings and Mac’s Fireweed Books) as well as online here on my website. The digital download version will be available soon, from CD Baby and iTunes. Stay tuned for updates on when they go up there!

Today is a day for packing up CD orders, snuggling my kids, dealing with sorely neglected household responsibilities, and maybe even a nap. Life is so sweet — and you are a big reason for that. Thank you for being a part of my life.

ONLINE album release party!!

Buy the CD

Welcome to the online album release party, for those of you who can’t attend the Whitehorse concert! Today I am officially releasing my debut album, “Bedroom Voice”. Woo hoo! I’m so excited!

To celebrate, here’s a taste of the first track from the album, “Life So Sweet”, as performed live this past January at my Under the Blue Umbrella concert.

I hope you enjoyed that! (Our videographer, Jessica, totally rocks. You can check out more of her stuff here.)

I think there should be some more music at this party!! For a limited time, I’m also posting one other full track from the new album. This one is another original. I wrote it in 2008. It’s called “Under My Skin”. (I know, I know, there’s already a song by that name. I couldn’t help it. The song practically wrote itself.)

What do you think?

If you’re wondering how you can buy the album, there are two ways:

1. You can click here to go to my webstore to buy the album and I will ship it to you right away!
2. You can wait until it’s available as a digital download. I tried to have that ready for today, but the stars just didn’t line up. Sorry! I will keep you posted on when it’s available — watch my Facebook page, check back here, or better yet, sign up for my newsletter.

It’s not a party unless there’s some conversation! So why not leave a comment below and let me know what you think, ask questions, tell me about the weather, whatever you want to talk about! I’m getting ready for the concert at the Yukon Arts Centre, but I’ll check in here throughout the day.

THANK YOU for being on this beautiful musical journey with me!

Own the first copy of Bedroom Voice

The first copy of Bedroom Voice is up for auction right NOW! This album will be marked “First Copy”, signed, dedicated to the winner, and shipped anywhere in the world free of charge.

To participate in this auction, follow this link: http://bit.ly/WqGcF6

I’ve had a few people ask me why the first copy of the album is going up for auction. Well, two reasons:

1. Lots of people have raised their hands and said they want to own the first copy, so selling it by auction makes it more fair. Right? I hope so!

2. Fundraising. As you may know, it costs a lot to produce an album. The artist has to pay for studio time, musician fees, producer fees, mixing, mastering, manufacturing, advertising… The truth is, most artists are likely to spend more money​ making an album than they will ever make in sales. (Bedroom Voice cost over $17,000 to record and manufacture.)

Participating in this auction is a way to support me in making music, because I hope to keep making music for a long time to come.

So thanks for your support and happy bidding!

A landmark day

I’m exhausted, but I can’t go to bed yet. I’m ensconced in my home-away-from-home, Easter Seal House in Vancouver. In the morning, I’ll be taking my daughter for her regular neurology appointment. She hasn’t had a seizure in almost three years, but the fight against her epilepsy isn’t entirely over yet. In preparation for her EEG, she has to be sleep-deprived… which means Mama has to be sleep-deprived, too.

Ah well, no different from any other night, really.

And it was such a wonderful day. The sun was shining in a blue sky in Whitehorse. Jade was a delightful travel companion on our flight down to Vancouver; she charmed everyone around her with her happy chatter and questions.

And some other exciting things happened, too.

I got a message first thing this morning from a local woman who does a show on the local French CBC radio station; she wanted to play a song from my upcoming album and promote the release concert. I got another e-mail from a producer who broadcasts for CBC North out of Montreal and I will be doing an interview with her early next week.

So that was fun.

Then, while I was downtown running some super-quick errands in preparation for the trip, I decided to pick up a copy of our local entertainment magazine, What’s Up, Yukon. Turns out, this issue contains a review of my album. And I’m thrilled with the review. (I’ll put a link up here once it’s available.)

THEN! When Jade and I boarded our Air North flight, I pulled out the in-flight magazine, Yukon North of Ordinary. I’ve been so busy, I hadn’t had time to see if the Spring issue was out yet. So it was pretty thrilling to open up the magazine to page 79 and find this:

The article was written by local journalist / blogger / amazing mother of three (soon to be four!) Sarah Niman, and I can’t believe how much information she packed into two pages. (I’ll put an electronic copy of that up sometimes soon, too.)

THEN!!

I arrived at Easter Seal House and found that the four boxes I was expecting here had indeed been delivered. Here’s what’s inside those boxes:

Hot off the presses!

Just over a week left before the album release, and I have a gigantic to-do list to wrestle into submission. But it will happen. And, you know, that will be an amazing day, too.

Not everybody’s cup of tea

I recently started reading Jann Arden’s memoir, Falling Backwards. Early on in the book she mentions that it’s important to her that people like her, that it always has been and it always will be.

That little tidbit had me secretly shouting, “Yes!” Jann Arden is 50, and by all accounts is pretty darned comfortable in her skin. It’s refreshing for me to hear this admission from a confident, successful woman. It’s probably not hard to guess this: being liked is important to me, too. But I’ve long been reluctant to admit it. It’s just not cool to confess that one’s self-worth depends on other people’s opinions.

Okay, that’s putting it a little strongly. I’ve got enough self-confidence to not fall apart just because someone doesn’t like me; a good thing, too, since being universally liked is next to impossible.

In 2007, I participated in a competition in Yellowknife, NWT, called North of 60 Idol. It was a 6-week elimination competition and I sang two different songs each week. Early choices were the Dixie Chicks’ “Cowboy Take Me Away” and Debbie Boone’s “You Light Up My Life”. One week I covered “On My Own” from Les Misérables and another I did “Black Velvet”.

One of the most difficult songs I did in the competition was “Peel Me a Grape”; the karaoke track I used was Diana Krall’s version, but I worked hard to create a different interpretation — a challenge for a neophyte jazz vocalist like me.

At the end of that song, the judges rendered their opinion. I remember that two of them liked it. The last fellow didn’t. He was a rock radio station DJ and he really just didn’t care for jazz, and he said as much.

“That sounded too easy,” he added. “I want to hear you belting it out!”

I couldn’t take it to heart; it was clear he just didn’t get it. The song has a lot words and I was trying to navigate the swing feel by instinct. All he wanted was to hear my voice at top volume. If the guy doesn’t like the style of music, there’s not much I can do about it. Personally, I loved that tune. (And I still do!)

So, despite my desire to be liked, I feel the same way about my music career now. There are musicians everywhere struggling to get noticed. All I can do is to try getting my music in front of as many ears as possible, so to speak. The more ears I can reach, the more likely it is to find the ones who like what they hear. Also, the more likely it is that there will be some who don’t. That’s okay, because it’s just part of the process of finding the right ears.

Anyway, when the right ears find me, I can stop worrying about being liked. I’m grateful that we connected…and we can be glad we found each other.

(One of the songs I performed on the last night of North of 60 Idol.)