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JULIE SILVER'S JOURNEY:
A girl who learned to lead
carries on her teachers' work
SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Julie Silver was that lucky little girl who
knew very early exactly what she wanted to do with her life. Her path,
in fact, is traceable to a single, defining moment.
"I was four or five," Julie recalls, "and after attending a Friday
evening service, my grandmother took me home, put me next to her at
the piano, and played one of the same pieces we'd just heard - and I
connected!"
Telllingly, the scene she remembers contains every essential element of
Julie's early artistic success: music sung by an elder, accompanied by
an instrument, to a precocious girl eager to learn.
In just a few years, little Julie was learning guitar - "my sister
started guitar at eight, so of ccourse I had to do the same!" -- and
developing the skills and confidence that would one day make her one
of the top artists, as both composer and performer, in modern Jewish
music.
"I grew up in a temple with a volunteer choir," she explains, "and I
knew at a young age that I wanted to participate in group singing and
performing. Every summer, starting when I was nine, I went to an
all-girls' camp. That was incredibly influential: I saw young women
leading worship, playing guitars and creating a sacred space, and I
felt like I was home."
Not that the secular world wasn't comfortable, too. "We lived in
Boston," Julie continues, "so of course there was Celtic music, and a
huge folk-music influence. I started writing my own songs at fifteen
or sixteen, and really, a huge part of my heart was and still is in
that music. To this day I listen to the Chieftains, Cherish the
Ladies, Mary Black. And I loved singers like Bonnie Raitt, Joni
Mitchell, Nanci Griffith, Dan Fogelberg, James Taylor." Livingston
Taylor became a mentor and friend, as did Peter Yarrow and other
secular artists.
Still, Julie's immediate future lay in religious music. "I was about
fifteen when I started earning money," she says, despite being very
young to sing the liturgy. "Our temple hired me to teach music; word
spread and by the time I was seventeen, I was traveling all over New
England -- well, my parents would schlep me to gigs," she laughs.
By the time she left home for Clark University, Julie was a musical
powerhouse. During college she played campus clubs, ran a popular
radio show, recorded and taught while earning degrees in economics and
Spanish and being named senior class speaker - "only I was the senior
class singer, and it was my first audience of thousands!" Julie
recalls with delight.
Through it all, almost from the day her grandmother helped her pick
out her first song, Julie had extraordinary support at school, too." From the age of six, I had a wonderful public-school teacher, Aline
Shader," she says. "We had music and drama three days a week, so I saw
a lot of her. She really taught me the value of group singing, and she
was my first songwriting teacher."
So it was no surprise when Julie, singing years later to her own
newborn daughter, found Aline's songs "were the ones that were always
on the tip of my tongue." The result is "For Love to Grow," her new CD
of Aline Shader's children's songs.
"I've been inspired to write - to find my voice as a Jewish woman by
the people who came before me," Julie says, "and I'm lucky to be able
to continue the good work of my own mentors. Aline, in her talent and
generosity, did so much to educate and support me; I'm honored to
bring her work to a wider audience."
"For Love to Grow" joins Julie's eclectic recorded output, which even
without major-label status now totals more than 60,000 in sales. Her
other CDs include the secular "Notes from Montana," featuring Julie's
duet with actress Helen Hunt on the Billy Joel song "Summer Highland
Falls," and the children's collection "Together," as well as Jewish
music for both adults and children on "Walk with Me," "From Strength
to Strength," and "Beyond Tomorrow." All are available through Sounds
Write - www.soundswrite.com.
"For the past 15 years, I've spent 25 or 30 weekends of the year on
the road, performing in every imaginable venue," Julie says. "In all
of it, all through the years, my central focus has been my live show.
I see seven-year-olds sitting next to seventy-year-olds, and it's the
same show: me and my guitar, folk music, children's songs, religious
songs, with humor and what I believe are universal values. Whether I'm
a guest cantorial soloist, an artist in residence, or doing a concert,
my whole focus is on connecting with the audience."
Julie will perform at the JCC San Francisco on March 25, 2007. Click here for tickets and information.
To learn more about Julie Silver, including a schedule of her upcoming
appearances, please visit her website at www.juliesilver.com. For
bookings, call Golden Land Concerts and Connections at 212-683-7816.