NYS Music 202​0

Tag: holly bowling

  • Holly Bowling heads out on Second Leg of Wilderness Sessions

    Pianist Holly Bowling has announced the second leg of her unique and groundbreaking virtual concert wilderness tour, featuring extraordinary solo sessions filmed live at some of America’s most spectacular natural locations.

    The second leg of the livestream Wilderness Sessions begins Thursday, October 22 with a performance from Casco Bay, Maine, followed every Thursday by new performances filmed at Taos, New Mexico (Oct. 29), Breckenridge, Colorado (Nov. 5), Hardscrabble Mountain, Colorado (Nov. 12) and Moab, Utah (Nov. 19).

    The virtual tour comes in advance of Bowling’s new album Seeking All That’s Still Unsung, a solo piano album featuring reimagined renditions of the music of the Grateful Dead, due out Friday, November 20.

    All performances will be broadcast for free via Bowling’s official Facebook page; viewers are invited to contribute to the San Francisco-based pianist’s Virtual Tip Jar.

    holly bowling wilderness tour

    There’s plenty of time to do something different,” says Bowling. “And I desperately wanted to get outside – that’s where I’ve been feeling most okay during all this. So we’re taking this crazy road trip in a self-contained little camper van and driving my gear out to these wild places and setting up and playing in settings I never in a million years thought I’d get to play music in.

    Holly Bowling, on the Wilderness Sessions

    Bowling recently announced a beautiful new album featuring solo piano renditions of the music of the Grateful Dead. Seeking All That’s Still Unsung arrives everywhere on Friday, November 20. The evocative collection features nine instrumental piano interpretations of songs spanning the Grateful Dead’s extensive catalog — both classics and deep tracks.

    Holly Bowling’s Wilderness Tour began on Thursday, September 3 with a performance from California’s Lake Tahoe followed by a performance from Yosemite National Park, Idaho’s epic Bruneau Canyon, Montana/Wyoming’s scenic Beartooth Highway and South Dakota’s Badlands National Park.

  • Pianist Holly Bowling To Stream “The Wilderness Sessions” From National Parks

    Holly Bowling is taking her talents to the great outdoors. Ahead of her upcoming Grateful Dead album Seeking All That’s Still Unsung, the San Francisco pianist will stream weekly performances from Yosemite, the Badlands, and more. “The Wilderness Sessions” will run for six Thursday shows from September 3 to October 8.

    Bowling’s “Wilderness Sessions” arrives after her last series of livestream concerts, “Alone Together: The Living Room Sessions.” In the eight-volume series, she performed Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” famously covered by Johnny Cash, as well as Radiohead’s “Idioteque.” While piano covers of songs with full bands have potential to sound bare, Bowling’s arrangements are rich and fully realized. On changing the scenery from her living room to some of America’s most iconic landscapes, Bowling says:

    As grateful as I was (and still am) for that opportunity, after a few months it was starting to feel like too much staring at the same walls in the same empty room. I decided if the only option right now is to play to empty spaces, then I wanted to do that in a giant canyon or on a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere. It’s one of those things that would never have worked in normal times. But I realized there’s two ways to look at this time – you can look at all of the things we can’t do, everything we’re missing out on, everything we’ve lost… or you can find the things that you can only do now that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise, and seek those things out and make them happen.

    Leg One dates for “The Wilderness Sessions” include:

    • September 3, Lake Tahoe, California
    • September 10, Yosemite, California
    • September 17, Salt Flats, Utah
    • September 24, Bruneau Canyon, Idaho
    • October 1, Beartooth Mountains, Wyoming
    • October 8, Badlands, South Dakota
    Wilderness Sessions

    Bowling first came to prominence in 2013, when she began performing solo piano arrangements of jam band music. One performance, “The Tahoe Tweezer,” based on Phish’s lengthy “Tweezer” led to two albums: 2014’s Distillation of a Dream: The Music of Phish Reimagined For Solo Piano, and 2016’s Better Left Unsung, a collection of Grateful Dead piano covers. Bowling soon attracted the attention of several Grateful Dead members including Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Warren Haynes, and was invited to perform at Terrapin Crossroads and Haynes’ Christmas Jam.

    While “The Wilderness Sessions” will be free to view on Facebook and YouTube, Bowling has created a virtual tip jar. Visit Holly Bowling’s website for more information.

  • Holly Bowling to release new album of Grateful Dead covers “Seeking All That’s Still Unsung” this fall

    Holly Bowling will releasing a new Grateful Dead album full of solo piano renditions this fall. The new album, Seeking All That’s Still Unsung, is made of music recorded at 25th Street Recording in Oakland, CA. 

    Holly Bowling Photo Provided by Press Release.

    Holly Bowling is a classical pianist who is based in San Francisco. Bowling uses the influence of jam band music to create an unique style. Her sound is emotionally rich and highly technical. She has already created albums focusing on Phish in the 2013’s Distillation Of A Dream album and the Grateful Dead focused Better Left Unsung (released December 9, 2016 through The Royal Potato Family). She known for her new band Ghost Light with Tom Hamilton, Raina Mullen and Scotty Zwang.

    In this new album Bowling is attempting to create a record that feels similar to her live performances. Bowling is also using this album to create unique sounds that can only be done in a studio. The album will have the feel of a live album while accomplishing things that are impossible from a musical standpoint to create live on the road. 

    How Holly Bowling is Making the Album Possible

    The album has been in the works for the last year and a half and has been recorded and mastered. But Bowling has a Kickstarter to get the album out to fans. The freedom that’s given her using a Kickstarter makes it so she can be an independent artist. The contributions to it will help to cover mechanical license fees, vinyl creation, and expenses associated with the release of the album. Some of these expenses include distribution, marketing, publicity. The mechanical licensing allows her to release covers of Grateful Dead songs and makes sure the original creators are fairly compensated

    For more information on Seeking All That’s Still Unsung and Holly Bowling visit her website and her Kickstarter.