ONE SKY by Marina Belina

Singer/composer Marina Belica, founding member and lead singer of the internationally acclaimed band October Project, has released “one sky,” an instrumental album featuring ten of her compositions.

Described by Marina as “modern, intimate chamber music,” each composition is arranged for acoustic ensembles that feature a unique palette of string, wind and percussion instruments. The music is contemplative and relaxing, born of dreams and meditation, with shades of different ethnic and folk music traditions. Marina plays keyboards and adds vocal textures throughout, including solo piano on the closing track, “A Way Home.”

“one sky” is produced and arranged by Marina in collaboration with producer/ performer/composers Randy Crafton (an acclaimed world music percussionist with over two dozen CDs to his credit as a producer/engineer, including the most recent release from American folk icon Richie Havens) and Christopher Cunningham (who produced Marina’s first solo CD, and has toured and recorded as a guitarist with such well-known artists as Marianne Faithfull and Marshall Crenshaw).

The many different colors of the music are reflected in the cover art, a panoramic photograph of a sunset over the Pacific taken from Kuta Beach in Bali by artist/photographer Steven Lowy. Sadly, Kuta was the site of a terrorist bombing last year. Marina is grateful to be able to share a scene of beauty from that same town.

FROM THE MUSICIAN
Note: This quote is excerpted from a Special Issue of Performing Songwriter, November 2001 from an article titled, “The Healing Power of Music”.

The impact of living next to ground zero was hard for people outside of Manhattan to really understand. The constant smell of possibly toxic smoke. The liklihood of even more ungodly smells to come, with nearly 3,000 people consumed by the debris. The shock of witnessing a key element of our local skyline attacked, burning and collapsing. The empty streets, a key avenue lined for as far as the eye can see with dumptrucks and bulldozers from communities throughout the tri-state area. Workers covered in dust and emergency medical personnel in green scrubs walking to the north because there was no transportation to or from the disaster site. The sound of helicopters, the initially constant and now intermittent sound of sirens. The look on people’s faces. The realization that probably everyone here would know of someone lost in this tragedy. The beauty of the sunset made even more beautiful yet sorrowful from the smoke and debris in the air. It felt disrespectful to return to ordinary life, and it was the only way to heal and go on.

Soho (where I live) was close enough for me to have witnessed the second tower collapse before my eyes, but not before I saw a man jump from a high floor in the most unforgettable embrace of life I have ever seen. He spread his arms wide and did the most graceful swan dive, a mythic figure, like Icarus, surrendering to his fate, a final majestic, and heroic act, choosing to fly before he died. Apparently, many people jumped. I saw only this man and will never, ever forget it.

My neighborhood was cordoned off, no people on the streets, no cars, and eerily silent for the remainder of that week. Only residents were allowed to come and go. If the winds has blown to the North on Sept. 11th and Manhattan had been engulfed in smoke, it would have been bedlam. Never was I more grateful for an easterly wind. Cruelly, it may have been the most beautiful day of weather of the summer.

Now we wait along with the rest of the world for what will follow.
The world as we knew it is no longer.

ABOUT THE MUSICIAN:
Singer/composer Marina Belica is the lead vocalist of the band October Project, which has headlined sold-out shows across the U.S. in addition to touring with Sarah McLachlan and The Crash Test Dummies. They have established an international following through radio and television broadcasts around the world.

In 2003, Marina released one sky, an instrumental album written, arranged and produced by her in collaboration with producer/performer/composers Randy Crafton and Chris Cunningham. Featuring an array of acoustic instruments including woodwinds, string quartet, guitar and percussion, the CD is a collection of ten original compositions with Marina adding keyboards (solo piano on “A Way Home”) and vocal textures on several tracks.

Marina is active on behalf of charitable causes and has appeared in and helped organize several benefit concerts. She has performed in Bali with Grammy-winning Swiss harpist Andreas Vollenweider in a concert for Balinese children, and in Carnegie Hall for the Foundation for Small Voices, a charity that raises money for children’s programs in the arts. She has also performed several benefit concerts for the NOCC (National Ovarian Cancer Coalition), and continues to oversee “Gilda’s Lounge,” an unplugged concert series she began in 2000 for Gilda's Club in New York City. (www.gildasclubnyc.org)

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