Kickstarter

Dear Friends, 

After 8 months of hard work, I finally got the 13 mastered tracks today!!! They sound amazing! They range from a song with doubled string and horn sections to a song that is just piano and voice - English and Russian - Euro and Country - they have undergone the stamp of 15 different musicians and engineers. I'm so excited to share them with you.

Next steps are art direction and physical CD production and duplication. 

Save the date and book your tickets now to NYC - the album release party is already scheduled for Friday, February 1st at 9pm at The Living Room, following a January residency the band will have there. 

Thank you again for your support! 

Sasha 

Dear friends, 

Making lots of headway here. Yesterday, my frequent guest singer at live performances, Julia Potulova, came to record harmony vocals with me and Justin. We recorded the parts that she usually sings at live shows as well as new arrangements for a song I wrote called "Whispering Tree" which is based on the story from the Russian folk song, "Tonkaya Ryabina," (also on the album) about unrequited love.  

Three part harmony really makes a song - there is something magical that happens when three different voices with slightly different qualities are singing in harmony. Check out the album "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs" by Marty Robbins to hear what I mean. 

Below is a clip of Justin and Julia doing a take for a section of "Whispering Tree." 

We are almost at the most exciting part, sending out half of the songs for horn and string orchestration and recording those arrangements. 

-Sasha 

Dear friends, 

Hope you are all well and excited for September! I wanted to send an update as to how the project is going so you can share in my excitement as it moves forward. 

Today, Bennett Sullivan, an incredible banjo virtuoso, came in to add parts to six songs. I love the sound of the banjo because it adds some grit to the ballads and it is a uniquely American instrument. Adding banjo to the Russian songs is a really neat sound and makes them truly Russian-American. 

I just came back to NYC from an incredible Artist Residency in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina where I worked on new material. The famous song, Wildwood Flower, is on my new album and it came from that area of the country. I wrote 10 new songs there - and one, appropriately titled Solitude, might make it onto the new album as unlucky number 13 :) 

Next steps are to send a few songs out for horn and string arrangements, schedule those musicians to come in and record, and finish background vocals on a brand new mic. 

Making a record is really like running a marathon - and I'm glad I ran a real marathon, because I know that the pay off in the end was worth everything it took to do it. So it will be with this album - the tracks are sounding incredible.

I'm including some photos from my residency, Bennett recording, and a photo of Will Clark (percussion/drums) and Kyle Saulnier (bass) who along with Justin Poindexter (guitar/engineer) are the backbone of the group. 

-Sasha  

Hi everyone! 

In the past weeks, I've interviewed some very interesting music press agents and learned a lot about the business. One thing I learned was that I have to record a full length album to get any attention from the press. So I've revised my project and expanded the album to have 12 songs on it. 

My last two CDs had 8 songs each - I can tell you that this project feels very different!

On Thursday and Friday of this week, Kyle, Will, Justin, and I got together to finish recording backing tracks for 9 songs. The songs are beautiful - each occupies its own world - and the performances are excellent. For the last few weeks before the session I spent hours tweaking song forms and lyrics and translating Russian to English and English to Russian for the bilingual tunes. In the next two weeks I'll be orchestrating these pieces with other parts (flutes/strings/horns/harmony vocals) and adding my lead vocals. 

I'm looking forward to sending you clips of the songs as they get closer to the finished product. 

And now back to work! 

Love, 

Sasha