Margie Adam Naked Keys

Naked Keys pre-dates the Windham Hill/New Age solo piano recordings with their emphasis on atmosphere over melody and rhythm. This music, deeply indebted to George Gershwin, commands attention and serves up a deeply satisfying experience of lyricism, romance, and whimsy. Margie has said, 'I've always related to the piano as an orchestra. When I compose a piece of music, the fun is in finding the bassline, the string section, the polyrhythms, the melody and descants and then weaving them together - like piecing together a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.' BIO Margie Adam is a rarity among musicians: she is both an accomplished singer-songwriter of elegant love songs and inspiring songs of conscience and a pianist-composer of soundtrack-style pop-jazz piano music. Her performance of 'We Shall Go Forth!' resides in the Smithsonian's Political History Division; Peter, Paul & Mary, Dusty Springfield and Cris Williamson have recorded her songs. Concurrently, her instrumental work has been a regular presence on NPR for decades. Margie Adam was born in Lompoc, California and started playing the piano as soon as she could climb up on the piano bench. She began her performance career in 1973 at an open mike session at Kate Millett's legendary Sacramento Women's Music Festival. In the following years, she participated in the definition and expansion of women's music as an art form, a political force and an industry. Her solo piano recordings include Naked Keys (1980), Soon & Again (1996) and Portal (2005). Also on Pleiades Records are these vocal albums: Margie Adam.Songwriter.(1977), We Shall Go Forth! (1982), Here Is A Love Song (1983), Another Place (1993), Avalon (2001) and Best of Margie Adam (2005). In 1980, Margie released Naked Keys and uncovered an enthusiastic audience for solo piano music that continues today. Margie premiered this groundbreaking recording on a national tour to raise funds for feminist candidates sponsored by the National Women's Political Caucus. In 1996, Margie Adam recorded Soon and Again, her second solo piano recording, which inspired the THREE OF HEARTS concert tour with solo pianists Liz Story and Barbara Higbie. PORTAL, Margie Adam's latest instrumental recording, combines the rich contemplative core of her piano solo music with a surprising new visual element of her artistic sensibility: photography set in motion.The quiet hum of spirit that has resonated in Margie's music from Songwriter through Avalon has now surfaced full force in PORTAL, a 2-disc CD/DVD set. The compilation CD, PORTAL, brings together ten solo piano performances with clear melodies, lush chord color and mesmerizing polyrhythms from Naked Keys, Soon and Again and her last vocal release, Avalon. These pieces have emerged as the soundscape for Margie's work with the labyrinth. PORTAL to Avalon is a 7-minute DVD program playable on a television or computer screen. This 'eyes open' meditation is a transporting interaction between subtly choreographed photography and mesmerizing music which creates a still space in the midst of a noisy world.