oySongs.com - Jewish music

Email: Password:

Forgot Password?

ARTIST

ALBUMS

SONGS

SHEET MUSIC

PICTURES

BIO

NEWS & REVIEWS

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!"

Tellingly, 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 course 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 Academy Award winning 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 at 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 performing a concert, my whole focus is on connecting with the audience."

To learn more about Julie Silver, including a schedule of her upcoming appearances, please visit her website at www.juliesilver.com.

View all albums by Julie Silver

oySongs - love Jewish music

Give e-Gift