Music
Press
Cynthia Russell takes her audience along for a ride into a world that's both
clever and sublime. Her performance at the 2009 ECMA Discovery Showcase
delivered a wallop of incredible showmanship.
- The Georgian
Spiced with subarctic metaphors, Russell's intimate ballads share satiral and sympathetic insights into Northern life, love and endurance. She exercises her comic wit with songs such as "About the Ravens', a modest proposal suggesting we harvest the ubiquitous scavengers as a cheap protein source, and "Came for Two", a tribute to many locals who came to Yellowknife for a visit and never left. Her soft confident voice and gentle humanitarian spirit are reflected most keenly in songs like "Fear and Flowers", about realizing the potential for happiness in us all, and her album's title track, "To a Song", in which she honors the artistic liberation she discovered in the North. - News North
Cynthia Russell had plenty of reason to smile Thrusday...glowing through her stories and shining as she sang. One can understand why Russell was beaming (at her East Coast Music Awards performance). - Western Star February 27, 09
Discography
My debut CD "To a Song" was released in 2007.
All songs have had radio air play locally and abroad.
Photos
Bio
"Cynthia Russell takes her audience along for a ride into a world that's both clever and sublime. Her performance at the 2009 East Coast Music Awards Discovery Showcase delivered a wallop of incredible showmanship." Christopher Vaughn – The Georgian. A little bit of the spirit of Sunday morning and Friday night all mixed into one. Thematic lyrics, fresh, and reassuring melodies are what sets Cynthia’s music apart and ahead. She has a comprehensive soul and “To a Song” is addictive not only in pieces but in its entirety. Cynthia Russell is a captivating vocalist and lyricist. "What a fabulous CD!"- Angela Antle CBC Weekend Arts Magazine. She co-produced her debut CD with Steve McGonigle from Black Box Studios in Edmonton to which the legendary Gateway Mastering Studios gave a phenomenal finished sound. Her CD features some of Canada’s best - including Juno Award winning Jeremiah McDade who plays soprano Saxophone, flutes and does inspiring harmonies, and Tony Michael - a fiddle, and mandolin master from Alberta. “I think my favorite piece is “To A Song”, she captures the entire process of song writing (and the feelings that go with it) perfectly! She has a gift.” - Terah Tucker Internet Voices Radio. Growing up on the West Coast of Newfoundland, Cynthia’s earliest memories and influences include her brother’s perpetual playing of the accordion in the kitchen and listening to her mother singing old gospel tunes. Later she fell in love with Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez, Tom Waits and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and from an early age she committed everything she heard on the radio to memory. On her Debut CD “To a Song”, she brilliantly mixes a little gospel bluegrass, with folk rock and adds in some traditional style Canadian satire. This songstress is a perpetual world traveler by train, by plane or by pen. She has climbed some of the highest peaks on the planet and is a pioneer in her approach to life, arts and music. Leaving home at sixteen, gave her a head start on her studies first at Memorial University and then at The University of Ottawa. She studied theater, languages and music, to which she has always been drawn.”From living on a 12 by 12 house boat on the Great Slave Lake of the Northwest Territories, to jumping off that bridge in no man’s land between Zambia and Zimbabwe over the Zambezi, she has gathered insights and savored sights that she has pocketed and used to embellish her work. “A Molotov cocktail wrapped in a filo pastry”, says Jonathon Torrens of the Trailer Park Boys. She has delighted audiences in the North with sharp and edgy humor that pokes a little fun a little too irreverently, at the uniqueness of the top of the world where she presently lives. She has performed in places like the historic Wild Cat Café in Yellowknife, recently at the Northern Arts and Culture Center in YK where she released her CD “To a Song”, she has performed on Sounds Like Canada with host Shelagh Rogers, has been getting heavy radio play on the East Coast, and has been picked up by radio stations in the US.
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