Heather Powell has an all-time classic kind of voice, she sings with very versatile, strong and beautiful vocals, expressing a wide range of feelings in a short amount of time,… think Karen Carpenter with even more possibilities as Heather can really push these notes very high. Her music has a true vintage pop sensibility, with a clear soft-jazz-lounge ambiance, and during some of the songs (‘Blue Light’, ‘Awaken Me’) which are featured on her new album ‘A Haze of Grays and Blue’, I had no trouble re-imagining her album art cover, she is wearing an evening dress, leaning on a piano and singing through a smoky atmosphere, even though smoking has been banned from bars for a long time. Other tunes have a retro sensuality, light as 70s pop songs, showcasing her sultry vocals floating as light as air over breezy melodies. If the arrangements are jazzy and fluid, it is her voice which dominates all these tracks, leading melodies and their poppy sensibilities … ‘Black and White Thinking’ with its backup vocals and sweet harmonies has even have a slight Bee Gees feeling, while the warmth of ‘Remember the Love’ sounds like a Carpenter song. ‘Wishing’ is light as a spring rain and the rest of the songs may even have some Broadway musicals’ tunes quality and catchiness, transposed in the felted ambiance of a dark cabaret.
Heather Powell is not only a singer but also a songwriter with several album (2012 ‘Believe It to Life’ and the brand new ‘A Haze of Grays and Blue’) and she has been performing since the tender age of 5 in churches. After spending 7 years in Germany (she is an ROTC graduate) and performing throughout Europe, she moved back in New York to start her songwriting career.
‘It has been a life-long thing for me.” She explained to this music blog. ‘My mother is a poet, so words have been in my family forever. My father used to read to us at night as a family, so stories and words and language have always been a part of my life.’ After being an actress and a musical theater singer, the process of songwriting actually came to her recently, ‘It’s been an amazing journey of my life and completely unexpected’… ‘When you allow yourself the freedom other things bubble up. I started writing from my heart the songs that my soul told me that I needed to get on paper. That became the album,’ she explained, ‘When you let go and truly do believe that what is meant to happen is going to happen then you’ll be amazed at where you find yourself. You’ll experience the joy of what you were meant to do. As artists we know who we are and who we were meant to be. We have no choice but to do it (music). This has helped me become the artist I was meant to be. If you continue to say it, express it and make the baby steps forward, it will happen for you.’
She recently had a release party for ‘A Haze of Grays and Blue’ with the True Groove All-Stars at Stage 72 in New York, just listen to her album via sound cloud below, and watch her perform one of her new songs ‘Black and White Thinking’ with The True Groove All Stars at The Cutting Room.
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