Barbara Kessler
Website:
http://www.barbarakessler.com/
Discography:
2012 - What You Keep
2000 - Barbara Kessler
1996 - Notion
1994 - Stranger To This Land
1992 - Barbara Kessler Live
| Barbara entered the professional music scene several years after graduating from Cornell University, entering some of her first songs in Rounder Record’s songwriting contest at Great Woods in Massachusetts – and winning1st runner-up. She caught the eye of judge Christine Lavin who invited her to attend the Martha’s Vineyard Songwriter’s Retreat. A song recorded at the event, “The Date,” landed on Rounder/Philo’s CD Big Times In A Small Town. The song received national airplay and led to the recording of her first CD, Stranger To This Land. Soon, Barbara was touring the country playing at coffeehouses and colleges. National acclaim for Stranger To This Land resulted in several high profile awards in 1995: Boston Music Award for Outstanding Debut Acoustic Album, National Academy of Songwriters Female Acoustic Artist of the Year and Kerrville New Folk Winner.Barbara’s career soared even higher when famed drummer Jerry Marotta saw her perform at CB’s Gallery in New York and offered to produce her second album, Notion. A review of the CD by The Boston Phoenix said, “It’s not the hooks, the Froom-like production, or even the songs that make this album one of the best by any contemporary songwriter in years. What puts her over the top is her voice; a smoothly subtle and sometimes jazzy, versatile soprano full of surprises.”Putumayo seconded that opinion by choosing the album’s haunting title track, “Notion,” for inclusion in its classic 1996 complication, Women’s Work, a theme that weaves its way through all of Barbara’s CDs. “I wrote ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ (Stranger To This Land) because she was a role model for me. She wasn’t a character’s wife or secretary. The show was about her trying to live an honest life as a single woman in the 1970s,” she said. “Women’s life choices seem more complicated in a lot of ways.” Barbara made her own difficult choice in 2000.After sharing the stage for nearly a decade and a half with artists including the Indigo Girls, David Wilcox, Shawn Colvin, Arlo Guthrie, Dar Williams, Richie Havens, , Christine Lavin, Livingston Taylor and many others, Barbara decided to stop touring with the impending birth of her second daughter, Elaina. “I became a stay-at-home singer/songwriter so I could be present for my two daughters,” she says. “Trying to be a Super Mom-Singer made it hard to do either job well.” The post-touring years included a self-awakening that Barbara credits for moving her singing and songwriting in a new, deeper direction. She also ventured into improv and musical theatre, even appearing as a double in the movie, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Her songs continue to be placed on TV shows like NCIS, JAG, Passions, One Life to Live, The Young and The Restless, All My Children, Ed, Felicity, and MTV. “Dreaming My Way Home,” the song she co-wrote and produced for the SONY PlayStation game, Rogue Galaxy has introduced Barbara to an international audience of all ages.
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