Surrounded by her vibrant paintings, the multi-talented Sarah Teitel recently serenaded her guests with songs from her new album at an art gallery in Toronto’s Leslieville district.
Accompanied by guitarist Andrew Frost, Teitel performed five songs at the album’s launch party, four of her own and a Welsh folk song. She delighted the audience at the Project Gallery on Queen Street East with the purity of her voice and her warmth. At the end of the short set, she thanked the 40 or so guests for attending. One audience member replied, “Thank you for sharing your beautiful voice.”
Teitel wrote seven of the eight songs on her new album, Who Are You Holding. They include Even So, an amusing anti-love song (Beware of my kisses/ Beware of my vows/ There’s a dagger I keep up the sleeve of my blouse); Parts of the Tree, a country-flavoured love song whose subject is a gnarled, old tree at Coxwell Avenue and Gerrard Street in the city’s east end, and Let Me Be, a sad tribute to a failed relationship.
When Teitel first heard her new album in its entirety, she wrote in her blog: “I was going to discuss my thoughts and feelings only insofar as they pertained to larger issues. No such luck.” She said that she wrote the songs individually and toward the end of the process she became aware of what connected them.
“I realized each song was representative of a different aspect of me. They are different voices I have and masks I wear and they are all true – even when these aspects are at odds with each other.”
The album’s title, Who Are You Holding, comes from the chorus of one of the tracks, Masks to the Core, in which she sings, “You won’t catch me wearing the same face twice.”
Teitel is an accomplished poet who knows how to paint clear pictures with words. She’s published a chapbook of poetry called I Don’t Think I Need to Tell You. Language and music are closely connected in her mind when she’s writing songs. “I hear melodies in words,” she said. Teitel has released two previous CDs that were recorded in home studios, but Who Are You Holding is the first recording she’s made in a professional studio with first-rate musicians supporting her.
The players on the album include Rafi Altounian and Frost on guitar, Calum Macleod on bass, Andrew Rasmus on percussion and Andrea Tynec on violin. Altounian is responsible for the excellent arrangements of Teitel’s songs.
“The most amazing thing [for me] is to hear the songs being played by professional, skilful, sensitive musicians. I can finally hear what I heard in my head,” Teitel said.
Teitel, who’s in her mid-30s, was raised in Richmond Hill, Ont., and attended Leo Baeck Day School. She trained as an actor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she began writing songs. At school, she had a charismatic teacher who influenced her, and as a gift for the teacher, she wrote songs – her first songs – for a musical production of Oedipus Rex.
After finishing university, Teitel spent a couple of years auditioning for parts, but eventually gave up on acting. “I loved acting when the material moved me, but as an actor, you don’t get to choose the material,” she said. Serendipitously, around that time, she was moving into a new apartment and a neighbour with a home studio saw her carrying her guitar in. He invited her to record with him, which culminated in her first CD in 2005, Stories and Music for the Mildly Suicidal. Another recording, On the Wing, followed in 2007.
Teitel said visual art has also been a huge part of her life. She started painting seriously when she was in her early 20s and had her first solo show, Brain Paintings, in 2012. The series was made up of works that incorporated brain images with architectural elements and cultural symbols. Her Project Gallery show, which closed on Oct. 1, was her second solo outing.
The colourful series of paintings complement her new CD. A painting of two separate faces, one serene and one panicky, is used for the album cover, and other works adorn the CD itself. In keeping with the album’s exploration of “relationality and the multiplicity of the self,” almost all of the pieces in the show include several faces and sometimes “you can’t tell where one face begins and another ends,” Teitel said.
To view Teitel’s artwork and to order her CD, visit www.sarahteitel.ca. You can download the songs on iTunes.
