Album Notes

“A wonderful voice and a great piano player too. All the right notes in all the right places… No showing off, I love it. Great tunes.”
– Trevor Pomeroy, Entertainment Coordinator, Sidetrack Café, Edmonton, AB

2007 has been a busy year for Mary Kastle.
The release of her debut EP “Fresh Air” in January marked the launch of her recording career. Self-described as “Tori Amos meets Miles Davis”, Mary “fused jazz, funk and world music to come up with a unique sound that is at once groovy, mellow and funky” (Tri-City News, Feb 28/07). The response was immediate and she was quickly selected to perform in the prestigious Listen Up! Festival, which showcases Vancouver’s best up-and-coming talent. From there, she went on to place in the top three at the West Coast Singer-Songwriter Competition and complete her first Western Canadian tour with great success.

Armed only with her trusty piano, soaring voice, and suitcase full of songs, Mary’s evocative stage presence makes you feel like you’ve known her a long time, even having just met. Between jokes about past stints as a rebellious piano bar performer and unruly music student, she wears her heart on her sleeve in tunes like “The Moments We Lost” and “Circus”. The driving reggae of “Perfect all the Time” and funky chorus in “Bell” bring out the edge in Mary’s music, revealing the many shades of her wide-ranging inspirations.

Whether in the School of Music or the School of Life, the one thing Mary has on side is experience. Her first notes at the piano around age five began a long and winding road to a professional music career. Initially hating the piano and stressing over her family hearing her mistakes, she avoided practicing and eventually quit at age 10 to pursue dance. After picking up the guitar and singing lessons a few years later, Mary realized she’d made a mistake and called her old piano teacher to take her back. After several years of songwriting and fronting rock bands, Mary released her first independent CD at age 18 but was simultaneously confronted with the tragic death of her then bass player and boyfriend in a car accident. While coping with the grief, Mary realized her playing wasn’t up to the standard she was striving for, so she put her CD on the shelf and enrolled into music school to become “the piano player of [her] dreams”.

Now graduated with a degree in jazz piano and more importantly a lot of performance experience, Mary has returned to her songwriting roots, finally giving way to that persistent, irrepressible muse inside her head. She’s moving forward with intricate social and political themes while continuing to strive for that perfect hybrid of jazz, pop, folk, rock, and funk.

Mary will be touring the East Coast in the fall of 2007 and working on her debut full-length CD, due for release in 2008.

More information: www.marykastle.com or www.myspace.com/marykastle