Sarah Slean '09

With all due respect to the many good singer / songwriters and bands that Canada produces, it would be difficult to imagine a more articulate, congenial and thoughtful ambassador for Canada’s music community than pop singer, composer, pianist, poet, actress and painter Sarah Slean. She is well loved by her fans, colleagues and those in the media, for not only her abundant talent, but because whether she is talking to you or performing on stage, Sarah Slean exudes warmth, she does not hurry her answers, but considers each question thoughtfully, and she answers with a candor that is refreshing, but never confrontational or dismissive.

With five studio albums, including last year’s limited edition The Baroness Redecorates, and two live albums to her credit, Sarah Slean continues to win fans over with her passionate, fun, and at times melodramatic performances, and songs which declare her freedom from past life cycles, such as “Get Home,” and the theatrical “Parasol.” When attending a Sarah Slean concert, her performance of “Parasol,” alone is worth the price of admission. It is not unusual at her concerts to hear her fans yell out affectionately, ‘We love you Sarah,’ but not with the groupie fervor one has come to expect at rock concerts, but instead with the inflection of genuine affection for their beloved heroine, seated at the grand piano.

It was almost two years ago, that I met the slim, long dark haired, Sarah Slean for the first time, in downtown Vancouver, a few hours before her concert, and Riveting Riffs Magazine has been privileged to review two of her performances. Recently, while preparing for an abbreviated tour with The Art Of Time Ensemble, Sarah Slean took time to reflect upon her career. She proved just as engaging on the telephone as she is in person.

“I feel that my efforts to steel myself during the past year and to become a bit thicker skinned, have failed miserably, so I think that my sensitivity and my vulnerability come out on stage, unprotected. I feel that the audience is respectful of that. I have been to rock shows before, where it is a power struggle between the performer and the viewer, and if for one second the viewer senses that the power has diminished or waned at all in the performer, or there is a slight trace of fear, the viewer devours the performer. It is like some kind of thing turns in the room. I have seen it before, especially at classical concerts. There can be this tense, really dangerous moment where the audience and the performer are wrestling for power. I have gotten to that point, where I don’t even try to win anymore and I just go out on stage exposed and vulnerable. It is wonderful when the audience is tender with that kind of trust,” Slean says, as she reflects on the warmth that flows in both directions, between audience and performer, during her concerts.

One never gets the sense from Slean, that music has just become a way to earn a living and the reasons are evident, as she talks about her lack of inhibitions as a performer, “Sometimes I get completely lost in it and I do love music more than anything on the planet. I just do, it is part of my makeup. When I am playing and singing, just the pure physical feeling of that is really joyful. I hope that translates.”

Slean has also penned two books of poetry, the first Ravens in 2006, and the more recent one The Baroness was released as a companion piece to her Warner Music album, bearing the same name. In fact, recently she was commissioned to write a poem which is being incorporated into a modern dance performance She also is an accomplished painter who in 2006 had an exhibit in a Toronto art gallery, and she hopes to have a public exhibition for her paintings, once again, in 2010. For now readers can visit this link on the Sarah Slean website to view her art. To add to her three Juno nominations, Canada’s highest musical achievement, Sarah Slean also received two Gemini awards for her 2006 performance in the television series Black Widow.