Anna Dagmar

Anna Dagmar was three albums into a critically acclaimed songwriting career weaving together colorful jazz harmonies, inviting pop melodies and refined classical piano textures. Then she stepped into the folk community, where she learned how to lift a personal story to a universal truth. This summer, the NYC-based pianist, arranger and singer-songwriter releases a new album, matched in music and narrative, Satellite.

Dagmar garnered widespread recognition for her previous album, Let The Waves Come In Threes (2009). It charted #6 on the National Roots Music Report with spins on over 100 stations nationwide. DJ George Graham of WVIA called it, “one of the best singer-songwriter albums of the year.” Recently, Dagmar was chosen as a Kerrville New Folk Finalist and Gold Prize Winner of the Mid-Atlantic Songwriting Contest for the haunting Satellite track, “We Were Children.” She has been favorably compared to Joni Mitchell, Billy Joel, Judy Collins, and Regina Spector, and cites inspirations including George Gershwin, Anais Mitchell, Sufjan Stevens and Jonatha Brooke.

Dagmar grew up a pianist steeped in classical repertoire but also drawn to the excitement of jazz improvisation. She earned a degree in jazz piano performance and music education from Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Recently, however, one of her most stirring lessons came while frequenting the local folk scene. The vigor and purity of folk music and its connection to the human story, was a revelation that changed her lyric approach on Satellite. “For these songwriters it’s more about lyrics than music. For me, it has been more about the music. I could really grab onto their words because they were so tangible. My past lyrics were poetic, and the music painted the text, but you couldn’t easily take hold of the stories,” Dagmar reveals. Through immersing herself in the folk scene she realized, “When you’re open and direct, the audience can enjoy the songs more because you’re inviting them in.”

The album’s most vulnerable moment is the single, “Satellite,” which will have an innovative video directed by Mitch Jacobson (Paul McCartney, Aerosmith). It was choreographed by Annie Sailer (Eric Hawkins), debuting on Dagmar’s Channel and YouTube’s Official “Dance On” Channel. Inspired by her father’s mathematical mind and her mother’s spirituality, the song joins together the Story of Creation with The Big Bang, and asks the question, “Are we the sum of all we’ve chosen to believe? Can I be somewhere in between?” Dagmar scored an elegantly elegiac string quartet intro that appropriately evokes this grappling introspection. This initial heady mood is then transformed by a winsome hook as the band joins in and uplifts the track with a warm, nuanced groove. Dagmar sings with grace and purity; she elongates notes with an ease and humility that shows her range without “showcasing” it. Her crystalline piano playing is similarly understated. She works with rich and expansive chords interspersed with sensitive melodic flourishes.

Within “Satellite,” Dagmar contrasts her parents. Of her father she sings: “I was raised by a man of reason/ In the elegance of truth/ Who plays with math like music/ And yearns for proof.” Of her mother she sings: “His heart belongs to a woman/ As selfless as the air/A helper and a holder/ With one sweet hour of prayer/ She kneels below the window/ And speaks to God above/ Whose quieting forgiveness/ Feels like a mother’s love.” As the track edges along, it becomes emotionally pent up, but the dynamic, waves-crashing turbulence in the reprise is satisfyingly cathartic. You get the feeling by the end of song she’s found the bridge between her parents’ complimentary contrasting dispositions.

“We Are Children,” like “Can We Be Old Friends,” from her previous CD, shows Dagmar’s compassion for the individual who suffers. Here one child and his regrets stand for all the children cruelly thrust into adult wars. Rounding out the mood on the album is her imaginative arrangement of the enduring classic, “Can’t Help Falling In Love” and the whimsical gypsy jazz original, “Down The Road.” “That song is about a vagabond – a tramp, like Charlie Chaplin – just a silhouette walking down the road. It’s those people you love even when you know you have to let them go,” Dagmar says. The tune has a cinematic quality that evokes the ill-fated romance of the lyrics with tender humor.

There is an openness flowing through Satellite, making it accessible lyrically, emotionally, and musically. Dagmar’s boldly intimate writing and her comfort with both producer Ben Wittman (Lucy Kaplansky, Paula Cole, Patty Larkin) and her A-list studio band, imbues Satellite with poise and a sense of liberating adventurousness. “On this album, the songs are real and vulnerable,” Dagmar says reflectively, “I’m revealing myself not just as a musician, but as a person.”