"If you're lucky, every once in awhile you get to see something special – something you don't see everyday – like, a pair of fawns or a double rainbow. Sometimes if you're really lucky, you will get to see the birth of a star, which is what an audience at the Restless Spirit Music, Art and Literature Shop may have witnessed on Aug 28th."- Christopher South, Ocean City Sentinel.
Anj is a singer/songwriter/piano player that exhibits at age 22 unusual poise and relaxed honesty onstage.
Music and performance were always in the home. At age eight she appeared as Dorothy singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow at Bally Park Place Casino in Atlantic City, in a production of Around the World in 80 Minutes. She captured the hearts of an audience of over 900 people.
Today this young artist has been gathering a lot of attention from the press in the South Jersey area. A reviewer in the Courier Post said, "I was blown away by her talent. A very intelligent young-woman that has everything needed to make it."
Anj has a haunting yet strangely confident voice, that is pristine and yet extremely vulnerable. Her performances have been likened to a one-woman play set to music, as she reaches out to the audience in interludes of "conversational poetry" that describe the genesis of each song. She demonstrates a beautiful command of her instrument as she tells the story of one who cares to deeply and feels too much and thus is the root of much of her own anguish.
Singing and accompanying herself on grand piano Anj has been at times compared to Carole King, Tori Amos, and Norah Jones, but as is always the way with artists who remain true to themselves, her style is definitely her own.
Her first recording effort, which she describes as a "concept album", was released in the Fall of 2004. A solo work of piano and voice entitled Coin and a Half Girls, it is said by Anj to be "a journey through the inner life of one struggling to live honestly and remain grounded - a ceaseless attempt to try to maintain perspective in a world too often shallow and overblown by its own ego."
On this inventive project, Anj has succeeded in capturing on record the experience of an intimate, autobiographical show in a small theater. Framing the album are dramatic prologue, intermission and closing tracks, which make the record less a collection of songs and more a theatrical production broken into two acts. Anj takes the listener on an unabashedly artistic and honest journey that they will not soon forget.
She is truly an artist to watch.
Contact Information & Links
www.anjmusic.net
www.myspace.com/anjmusic
