"Beautifully moody or riotously rocking... piano-based music of transcendent quality" describes the original heart and soul sound of this alternative jazz, blues, rock artist.

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Contents

#		Title	Length	Sample
1		Fade Away	4:12
2		Midnight	3:17
3		Crayon and Ink	4:40
4		Dark Blue	3:52
5		Scared	4:31
6		Philosophy	4:11
7		Midnight - Version 2002	3:12

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Description

"Why music?"

"Why breathing?"

Allison Crowe's simple reply to an interviewer's question says it best.

Music is elemental. "Music is one of the purest forms of true freedom and universal expression through human emotion," she says. "In other words, music, to me, is life."

Allison Crowe, descended from Irish and Manx stock, was born and raised in Nanaimo, B.C. ~ a harbour city on Vancouver Island. (Running 460 km/286 miles north to south - almost the length of Ireland - Vancouver Island, with its population of 750,000, is the largest island on the North American west coast.) Nanaimo has a strong musical heritage and is home to the oldest continuous community band in Canada.

"I grew up surrounded by music. There was a lot of jazz, classical and rock, in both my immediate and my extended families," says Crowe, now 22. Her first public performance was at age six ~ belting out a big hit of the Jazz age, Ja-da (Ja-da Jing Jing Jing!). In her pre-teens, Allison Crowe heard Nina Simone (a genre-buster of another generation) and Ella Fitzgerald albums spinning at home, she was able to carry this music into her school band and music theatre studies. She found a coach to help harness her powerful vocal instrument and teachers to encourage her playing on piano, flute, bass and drums. By then, her parents' albums had been joined by her own collection of recordings by new artists like Ani DiFranco, Pearl Jam, Tori Amos and Counting Crows, making for an eclecticism evident today in her music.

"Everyone I was surrounded by inspired me in different ways," she notes. "They inspired me to play better, work harder, enjoy what music and being a musician can be, while at the same time being realistic about all that it can bring, good and bad, and also, not to let it go to your head at any time, under any circumstances. And that can mean either getting a huge inflated head, or, being overly hard on yourself."

By age 15, Allison Crowe was playing to ever-widening crowds in coffee-houses and bars up and down her island. "I love singing for people," she says. "It's a way to connect and share with others, which I think is very generally important for emotional survival. Communication is crucial. Just being able to do what I do, to write and sing and perform, makes me feel not only alive, but incredibly lucky, knowing at any moment everything could change, so that I don't take one second for granted."

In 1998, she won the VIEX Island Songbird Competition, topping 17 other vocalists. Her growth in the years since has been steady and remarkable. In 2002, the same year she completed her first national concert tour (as headliner), she was a featured guest artist on the website of multi-platinum recording artist Jewel.

Jewel's site stated: "Beautifully moody or riotously rocking, Allison Crowe creates piano-based music of transcendent quality."

Combining classical virtuosity with the improvisational qualities of jazz and the gale strength of gospel and rock at its most visceral, she's been called "a force of nature" by critics who've found her original voice impossible to pigeonhole. As one newspaper reviewer said of Crowe's sound: "Make your own comparisons, then forget them."

Through hundreds of public performances in coffeehouses, clubs, cabarets, theatres and concert halls regionally and nationally, Allison Crowe is earning increasing acclaim for her distinctive vocal timbre, unique emotional delivery, rhythmically propulsive piano-playing and her thrilling, risk-taking, music. The internet is also helping to carry her words and music to a global audience. (Her songs have been among the most downloaded tracks at Amazon.com, the world's largest online store.)

Allison Crowe has comfortably shared a stage with internationally renowned jazz pianist/vocalist Diana Krall (generations apart, both artists are born on the same day), and had her version of a Beatles song placed on a tribute album alongside tracks by punk/DIY legends such as Sylvain Sylvain (of the New York Dolls) and the late Dee Dee Ramone. Two, unique, one-hour concert television specials, "Inside Pandora's Box: Allison Crowe" and "Allison Crowe: Tidings", have been broadcast across Canada. Her live performances are exciting events and she's equally at home behind a grand piano in a soft-seat theatre as she is rocking out in a sweaty venue packed with Pearl Jam fans.

"Soulful. Alive. Joyous. Grievous. Real, true, music is what I want to make," she says.

To that end, in late 2003 Allison Crowe launched her own label, Rubenesque Records Ltd., with the release of Lisa's Song + 6 Songs ~ a collection of songs recorded live-off-the-floor over the past couple of years. An equally well-received EP, Tidings: 6 Songs for the Season, soon followed. Secrets, the singer-songwriter's debut full-length album was released in Summer 2004. (This CD is available online, here at CD Baby, and through Festival Distribution, Canada's premiere purveyor of jazz, blues, folk, roots and world music).


rock - gospel, jazz - grunge, classical - blues, folk - soul; a voice that unites genres and generations

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"Allison Crowe may not be well-known now but this young woman has the voice and talent to be the next Alanis or Norah. The raw emotions in her hauntingly beautiful rendition of 'Angel' should convince you of her potential." - Jerry Wong, New Songs for Peace Project

"The first thing you notice about Allison Crowe is her voice. Rich and dark, it seems to come from a place most singers can only dream of accessing. Then there are the songs. Filled with raw passion and accompanied by Crowe's eloquent piano playing..." - Clodagh O'Connell, The Vancouver Courier

"One of the most amazing vocal talents anywhere today' - Peter Karroll, manager, Bif Naked

"Crowe's singing is tremendously powerful; almost operatic. When she digs into a sustained note, as she so often does, the voice is huge, rounded, with a dark timbre. If listening to the garden-variety pop princess is like drinking insipid white wine... then Crowe is akin to sipping the richest of brandies." - Adrian Chamberlain, Times Colonist

"Janis Joplin's 'ballsy' power and Sarah McLachlan's lilting sweetness" - Mark Hume, The National Post