PROFILE: Eve Marie Shahoian
By the
time she was nine years old, Eve Marie Shahoian had appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” “The
Mike Douglas Show,” “Kids Are People Too” and even that precursor to today’s reality TV shows, “That’s
Incredible!” Hailed as a child vocal prodigy, “the pint-sized coloratura
soprano” performed with Liberace live in Las Vegas
and on television and was compared to the celebrated Beverly Sills for a poise and grace far beyond her years.
Singing,
incidentally, is in her DNA. Her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother had
big, beautiful voices, so it’s not surprising that her parents took their daughter’s remarkable talent from an
early age in stride. But the grueling performance schedule eventually took
its toll and, following high school graduation, Eve Marie decided to put her performing career on hold to pursue a different
sort of life. “I needed to take a break,” she says of those years,
“and my parents, who were supportive of my decisions since I decided to become a singer shortly after toddlerhood, supported
this decision too.”
The San Francisco Bay area resident earned a
BA in Clinical Psychology and an MM in Vocal Pedagogy. For over ten years, she’s
taught voice, focusing her attention on young talent and the empowerment a voice can bring to their special challenges. She’s also continued to sing, performing with opera companies and symphonies—among
them the Oakland Lyric Opera and Oakland Symphony—as far away from her San Ramon home as London, England.
“It’s been a journey,” she laughs.
Now it’s
her time, and she’s focusing once more on performing. “Music and
performing has always been my passion, but everything I do, including singing and teaching, is organic,” she explains. “The time had to be right, and finally that time came. I decided to take ownership of my own voice, step outside the box of my classical training, draw on the
tools of that training and access colors and parts of my voice in ways I’d never explored before. I had to find and take ownership of my own sound, my own way.
What emerged
from that process is Eve Marie’s CD WAITING FOR YOU, a 10-song collection of finely crafted material
that resonates with the beauty of her shimmering, seductive vocals and a depth of emotional energy rarely seen in a debut
CD. “I’m a hopeless romantic,” she admits. “My music is about heart, mind and spirit. It’s
about love, growth and evolution. For me, a good song is a song that speaks to
everyone.” An appealing marriage of elements, WAITING FOR YOU
mixes contemporary pop favorites and the classic American Songbook with her own original material. Familiar titles like “The Way You Look Tonight” and “You Made Me Love You”
turn into magical moments courtesy of Eve Marie’s heartfelt vocals: The
same is true for her delivery on Christine McVie’s “Songbird” and the Diane Scanlon-Eve Nelson composition
“I Know You by Heart.”
The desire
to write her own material first hit Eve Marie about five years ago. “I
finally decided to stop talking and start writing,” she says, adding that the process of putting words and life and
music together has become both frequent and more spontaneous of late. The CD’s
title track is one of those songs, she explains, “It came from the depth of my soul.” Whether she’s crafting material that’s pop flavored or jazz-inflected, a slow ballad or an up
tempo tune, Eve Marie explores the many sides of love on songs like “The Bells Sang Our Song,” “I’ll
Take A Picture,” “Where Did You Go,” and the many sides of
life on vignettes such as “Temptation” and “Lost Soul Today.”
Assisting her with producing, as well as playing on WAITING FOR YOU were Bay Area favorites Tony “Macaroni”
Lufrano and Garth Webber. Lufrano, who is known for his talent on keyboards and
for his skill as a producer and arranger, has worked with artists Boz Scaggs, Bonnie Raitt, The Whispers, Huey Lewis &
The News and Robben Ford, among others. Webber, a guitarist who has recorded
with artists including Miles Davis, Greg Allman, Mose Allison and Bill Champlin, has also accrued impressive credits as a
producer and engineer. Accustomed to performing live and responding to the audience,
Eve Marie describes the experience of being in a studio and recording her first CD succinctly:
“I felt like I was under a microscope. It was a skill I had to acquire.” That she has.
So what
does this multi-talented singer/songwriter/pianist see in her future? “I
am going to continue doing what I love to do,” she says. “I love
to perform. I want to perform these songs and songs like them with an orchestra. I want to perform internationally. I’m a visionary, and the sky’s the
limit. I don’t want to be on my death bed with words like ‘I should
have… I could have…Why didn’t I?’ I want to say that
I gave it my best shot.” Armed with a unique perspective from having achieved
acclaim early in life, Eve Marie now eagerly anticipates—not an encore, but—a whole new beginning.
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For further information,
contact: W3 Public Relations
323-934-2700
w3pr@yahoo.com
