Album Notes

More Reviews!!:

3-1-04

“Think Gillian Welch, think Joni Mitchell, think Eva Cassidy alive and well, and you’re still nowhere near. Appalachian spawned, (Madison, WI based) Christine Costanzo does sparse, acoustic-folk fragility like all and none of the above…Play “Big Sky” in a pitch-dark room and you’re immediately transported to horse-land praries, windswept wide-open highways and grassy foothills…” Splendid

4-22-04

Madison soloist Christine Costanzo evokes the bygone whisperings of Joan Baez, Neil Young and even the Dead with her debut CD “Big Sky”…her dreamy, poetic songs effectively weave the genres of country, folk and rock without getting mired in the land of neo-hippy cliché.” The Shepard Express, Milwaukee’s Weekly Newspaper

11-03

“Though she’s from Ohio and currently lives in Madison, Costanzo favors the bare-bones, melancholy musings of Appalachia, with a dash of Joni Mitchell’s windswept Canada thrown in.” The Onion


Bio:

Christine Costanzo's acoustic guitar-based songs are interpretations of her experience of life and living seen through the eyes of emotion. If emotions were the sea, her words and music would be the creatures that live therein.

Originally from a small Ohio college town embedded in the Appalachian foothills, Christine evokes a sense of place at once lost and yet inextricably bound to experience. The Appalachians crop up again and again on her first full length CD, "Big Sky". From the county road in the opener "Appalachian Sky" where she's "still goin' 55" to "those hills where we first started" in "Send Me Back to Ohio", this is the place of youth and innocence. In "Jesus Was A Kind Man", "those eastern woods" become the place of redemption "where all our goodness survives" and in "Huck Finn" this landscape is transformed into the departure point for adventure with the exclamation "I'll hop the Ohio, the Missouri will take you far/ we'll meet up and head out to the sea!"

Now residing in Madison, WI, Christine came to music by way of poetry. She began performing in the Madison and Chicago areas and released a three song EP in 2002. The self-produced "Big Sky" contains songs spanning the past seven years. Very few take the plunge and are willing to be so candid in expressing to others what they have discovered. Christine does so with a folk-rock "Cohenesque" flavor. Her debut CD , leaves no doubt.


Recordings:

"Christine Costanzo"--3 song EP, 2002
"Big Sky"--July 2003

Reviews:

Big Sky:

"This is a very beautiful piece of work...the the whole project looks and sounds like the wide open hills and horse land praries that inspired it.
Dreamy, nad often more like musical poetry, these are confessional and heartfelt soliloquies that are squarely focused on the center attraction: Costanzo's voice and guitar." (Rick Tvedt, "Rick's Cafe", October 2003).

"Folk music is as much about place as it is about people, and Ohio native Christine Costanzo draws heavily from her youth at the foot of the Appalachians in portraying the travels through life and love..."Big Sky" features cameo performances by Catfish Stephenson and Chris Wagoner, among others, but the album rises and falls on Costanzo's breathy voice and yearning narrative." (Al Ritchie, "The Isthmus",October 2003).

"...the album feels very warm and intimate...it's about abetting Costanzo's wonderfully emotive voice as it traverses a landscape that perhaps has a few peaks after all." (John Benninghouse,"The Green Man Review",Sept. 2003)