Walk into Kelley Dolan's recording studio and you'll see a filing cabinet overflowing with orchestral scores, tattered clarinet music and coffee-stained piano songbooks, juxtaposed with computers, monitors glowing softly, hard-drives crackling, an 88-key Kurzweil jutting out to one side, racks of outboard gear, musical instruments and CDs scattered everywhere. If you wade through the maze, in the corner you'll find a dark wooden chest, covered by a thin layer of dust. No one opens that chest anymore. We don't know what's inside, but surely it plays a role in the symphony of this artist's musical landscape.
After several years of intensive musical exploration and work, Kelley's latest CD, Bedtime Story, a postmodern nightmare, is an inventive synthesis of traditional and experimental music. Incorporating modern songwriting, vocals, live improvised chamber music, and electric & electronic sounds, an ardent fan has described this CD as 'modern day Beethoven'.
"The songs strike me more like movements rather than what i perceive as songs-- finite packages of melody and rhythm. Even your lyrics seem to be oriented around a new something/object/idea each time but you don't step too far from a central tone in your thoughts, that is, this larger theme of heartache, longing, loss, fear and recovery." - David D'Alessio, www.cdbaby.com/daviddalessio
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