Album Notes

"Exceptionally strong!"
--Billboard Magazine 1999 Songwriting Contest

"She blew away the audience, blew me away--great piano player!"
--Fern Spierer, DJ at WRSI FM 95.3 Northampton, MA

"A modern-day Carole King."
--Joey Wells, Caprice Records

Marly Hornik is a singer, songwriter, storyteller and flirt living in New York City. She writes songs about New York City and its residents based on true events from the lives of real people. She has been compared with everyone from Carole King to Lucinda Williams to Steely Dan--some serious shoes to fill, but Marly prefers to wear her own size. She performs regularly in NYC at world renowned music venues The Bitter End and The Knitting Factory, as well as touring throughout the Eastern US. She finished second in the 2001 Georgia Music Industry Association's annual Songwriting Contest at Eddie's Attic in Atlanta, has showcased in the Philadelphia Music Conference, Nashville New Music Conference, Northampton Music Conference, been featured on the front page of CDBaby.com, and opened for Marc Ribot, Caroline Aitken and Chocolate Genius.

Born in Virginia, raised in Massachusetts, a former hobo, back-country ski guide, and beach bunny, Marly is notorious for following her muse into unknown territory. "I always start with a true story," intones Hornik, "usually one that has elements of both comfort and discomfort, like life. I shy away from neat packages--happy and angry are already pretty well represented."

Marly grew up listening to Stevie Wonder, the Beatles, and Johnny Cash on family car trips. "'Folsom Prison' and the Tappan Zee Bridge are forever linked in my mind--that's my dad's influence." Other influences come from 12 years combined study of classical voice and piano, jazz theory, and ragtime. But if you ask what her favorite kind of music is, she always says "Live!" For Hornik, there is no greater thrill in music than the real time connection between artist and audience.

Marly currently gets her own thrills writing, performing, promoting, and distributing her music. Oh, and there's the occasional trip to Coney Island. "I love roller coasters! Put me on the Cyclone and I'm up there screaming with the best of them; I feel so lucky to be alive!"

From All Music.com, August 2001:
...Marly Hornik... shows a lot of promise on her 2001 debut, Liberty Heights. Unlike other singer/songwriters who made their recording debuts in 2001, Hornik doesn't get into the angry young women thing. The New York-based singer/songwriter is generally optimistic on this five-song EP, which has a strong Carole King influence but nonetheless demonstrates that Hornik is her own person. Calling Hornik (who brings hints of jazz to a pop/rock/adult alternative foundation) an optimist isn't to say that she is a Pollyanna -- the title song is a dark number that describes a poor, crime-ridden, drug-infested neighborhood. But it is safe to say that on the whole, she tends to see the glass as half full rather than half empty... --Alex Henderson