TUCSON (Observer Update) - Songstress Linda Eder comes to the Tucson Music Hall for one night only on Tuesday, December 16, 7:30 p.m. to “Rock the Holidays” with her new country-pop sound!"This isn't so much a departure as it is me getting back to who I really am," Linda Eder says of her new album The Other Side of Me, on which the celebrated vocal icon undergoes an unexpected stylistic reinvention to deliver one of the most compelling musical statements of her long and storied career. Eder has long been established as one of America's premier singers of pop standards and Broadway tunes, with a large and passionately devoted audience that's embraced her memorable albums and her dramatic live concerts. While many established artists might, at this point in their careers, feel the temptation to coast on past achievements, Eder embraces an exciting new set of creative challenges on The Other Side of Me, her tenth album and her Verve debut.
As its title suggests, The Other Side of Me finds the artist trading her established musical approach for a looser, more intimate country-pop sound that's perfectly suited to the thoughtful, introspective songs that she's chosen for the project. "This is really me getting back to my natural musical self, the person I was before Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand came into my life and I went the Broadway route," Eder asserts. "This is the kind of music that moved me as a kid, when I first started playing my guitar and learning how to write songs, so it's a natural direction for me.
"I still love the Broadway stuff," she adds, "and I don't ever intend to stop singing it. It's given me a wonderful life and a great career, and I still enjoy that music tremendously. But with those songs, it's more about playing a role, rather than being yourself. The standards call for you to be elegant, but I'm basically a blue-collar farm girl at heart. So when I'm standing up there in a gown, it's a bit like putting on a role for me. There's nothing wrong with that, and I enjoy it and I'm good at it, but it's not quite me. These new songs, and this approach to singing, is a lot more natural—and so much fun—for me."
Indeed, in many ways, The Other Side of Me harkens back to Eder's earliest musical roots. Born to immigrant parents in Tucson and raised in Brainerd, Minnesota, she learned to play piano and guitar during childhood, and embraced songwriting as a vehicle for self-expression in her teens. She even won a local beauty pageant at age 18, performing one of her original compositions in the contest's talent competition. Her early musical development began to take shape after she first heard Judy Garland singing in The Wizard of Oz. "Even at the age of eight, I was blown away by hearing this person pouring her heart out," she recalls. "I came from a very stoic Midwestern family that didn't really show their emotions all that much, so that was a revelation to me and I was really drawn to it and pursued that direction."
Eder launched her recording career in 1991 with her self-titled debut album, and soon established a vital niche as America's most popular and acclaimed new interpreter of pop standards and theatrical songs with such releases as And So Much More, It's Time, It's No Secret Anymore, Christmas Stays the Same, Gold, Storybook, Broadway My Way and By Myself: The Songs of Judy Garland. Those albums showcased Eder's abundant vocal gifts as well as her knack for delivering dramatic, emotionally resonant interpretations of familiar songs. Her talents won her a large and loyal fan base, who packed her performances at such prestigious venues as New York's Carnegie Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., Chicago's Cadillac Palace Theatre, and Broadway's Gershwin Theater.
To bring the material from The Other Side of Me to life in concert, Eder has put together a new live stage show, in which she plays guitar and sings in the more relaxed vocal style she employs on the new album, while fronting a country-flavored seven-piece band. At the same time, she's also continuing to perform concerts of standards and Broadway material, as well as a duo show that she's been developing with concert master Michael Feinstein.
Tickets are available NOW and range in price from $29-$49. Buy tickets online at broadwayintucson.com, by phone with Ticketmaster at (520) 321-1000 or in person at the Tucson Convention Center Ticket Office, 260 S. Church Avenue during regular business hours (Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m., Sunday Noon - 4:00 p.m.). Broadway in Tucson is part of the nationally recognized Nederlander Producing Company of America. Over the course of five seasons, Broadway in Tucson has partnered with the Tucson Convention Center to bring more than 350,000 people downtown to attend Broadway’s best shows, special events and concerts. For more information on Broadway in Tucson, please visit broadwayintucson.com.
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