Music Style:
Jazz/Pop
Hometown:
Seattle
Country:
United States
Band Description
Jazz/pop singer/songwriter Halie Loren combines jazz, soul, blues, folk, and pop. Characterized by guitars, piano, organ, double-bass, horns, cellos, & layered vocals, she & the band create diverse and rich musical array of original songs & unique r
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Artist Biography
Halie Loren is an international, award-winning jazz singer/songwriter. She brings a fresh and original perspective to time-honored musical paths, singing in several languages and channeling her innate understanding of connectedness across musical boundaries to forge bonds with diverse audiences in North America, Asia, and Europe.
Her debut jazz CD, 2008's “They Oughta Write a Song,” won the International Independent Music award for best vocal jazz album of the year, and she was quickly signed in Asia by JVC/Victor Entertainment. Halie has since released six additional albums, and gone on to win many awards as both a singer and a songwriter. She is signed in North America with Canadian-based Justin Time Records. Loren’s original song “Thirsty” won the Independent Music Awards’ best jazz song of the year in 2011. Her 2012 release, “Heart First,” was honored by Japan’s Jazz Critique Magazine as the best vocal jazz album of year, and reached No. 1 on the iTunes Canada jazz albums chart. In 2013, “Simply Love” debuted at No. 1 on Billboard Jazz / Japan and entered iTunes Canada as #1 jazz album. 2014’s release, “The Best Collection” also charted as Billboard Japan’s #1 Jazz Album.
Along with recording success, Loren’s live performances have expanded to include performances with the Jazz Orchestra of Sicily, the Corvallis-OSU Symphony Orchestra in Oregon, the Monroe Symphony in Louisiana and the prestigious Britt Fest Orchestra. For the past three years she has traveled east to west in the US and other parts of the world with her band, including Canada, Japan, Italy, China, Hong Kong, and South Korea. In support of her newest album, “Butterfly Blue”, released in Asia in early 2015 to #1 on the Billboard Jazz Charts and released to the rest of the world in June, Loren is continuing to tour across the US and other parts of the world. (www.halieloren.com / www.facebook.com/halielorenmusic).
Halie Loren is an international, award-winning jazz singer/songwriter. She brings a fresh and original perspective to time-honored musical paths, singing in several languages and channeling her innate understanding of connectedness across musical boundaries to forge bonds with diverse audiences in North America, Asia, and Europe.
Press Release
Internationally-acclaimed Singer-songwriter Halie Loren enjoyed a very busy 2015/2016 touring behind her critically-acclaimed newest (and eighth) album Butterfly Blue, which was featured on this year’s Grammy ballot.
Upon its release in Japan and Asia in 2015, Butterfly Blue debuted at #1 Billboard on Japan’s jazz album chart, her third album to top that esteemed chart, and is currently ranked as the 9th-bestselling Jazz CD (just behind the likes of Diana Krall and Lady Gaga/Tony Bennett) on Amazon Japan for 2015. Loren’s seventh Japan tour in April 2016 with her quartet consisted of ten days, five cities, and thirteen sold-out shows, with an eight-show run at Tokyo’s famed Cotton Club. In the past three months, she returned yet again to Asia for her fourth tour of Korea and to Europe for a string of performances in Italy. Loren consistently and actively tours the U.S., Canada, Asia, and Europe, including this year’s sold-out appearances at the Rochester International Jazz Festival, Montreal International Jazz Festival, and iconic club Hugh’s Room in Toronto, Seattle’s Jazz Alley, and Yoshi’s in San Francisco, followed by tours of South Korea and Italy.
Butterfly Blue has been described as Loren’s most sophisticated and mature release yet, and also her riskiest effort in terms of artistic reinvention and reach. This broad-yet-unified collection of twelve tracks, hailed by many critics and fans as her best yet, creates a soul-steeped journey through the expansive varieties of American music: from textural and catchy original opener “Yellow Bird” to the playfully defiant hope of “Carry Us Through”, from the gutsy oomph of Motown on Loren’s “Butterfly” to the ramshackle darkness of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, from the sultry swing of “Stormy Weather” to the percussive and plaintive poetry of album original “Blue” (penned by guitarist/songwriter Daniel Gallo), each song moves with ease into nuances of folk, balladry, jazz, soul and blues. There is fracture here, and heartbreak, an emotional fragility that forever seeks redemption in song and the healing powers of love. And there is joy, a singleness of vision that moves upward and outward seeking the dynamo of connection, both to others and the world at large.
Authenticity and connection is one of the primary keys to Loren’s artistic approach: whether it’s injecting the American Songbook with old-school soul or finding a familiar thread of nostalgia in newly-penned originals, no matter the language (her repertoire finds her singing in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and more), Loren finds ways to bridge cultures and genres in unlikely and always heart-felt ways. “Music creates greater connection with other people, connection to my purpose for existence,” Loren says.
The imagery throughout Butterfly Blue speaks to Loren’s own artistic progress, as well as to her fifteen-year professional music career during which she’s journeyed from Alaskan childhood prodigy to jazzy chanteuse to globetrotting award-winning artist—images of strife, loss, cocoons of becoming, things fallen, but also flight and liberation and longing, a new-found sense of freedom, and a return to the vast wellspring of American song. “There is always beauty to be found, even in the most painful experiences, and finding ways to reflect that beauty back at the world to remind us that it’s still there is, to me, the role of art. That is ultimately the highest calling for me as a music-maker. To give back, to share beauty, and to let it transform me so that it might transform others,” says Loren. This idea is most thoroughly embodied in her original song “Butterfly”: a rousing, bluesy number that captures the emotional and artistic triumph of the album. “And you say that I just gotta play this game and I’ll leave it alive,” Loren sings. “And someday I’ll look back and see all the pain and fear was a lie… You gotta die awhile to come back a butterfly.”
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