Since childhood, Arden has immersed herself in music. She attended the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Manhattan School of Music where she was classically trained. “I was totally immersed in classical music for most of my adolescence. When you’re studying classically, it’s kind of taboo to be playing or singing pop music because the technique is so different. So there I was in class perfecting Mozart, and then I would go home and write pop songs that nobody knew about.” It’s clear from one listen of her songs that Arden has many musical influences. No matter where she resided or what she studied, Arden soaked up whatever was around her— a musical sponge saturated with inspiration from fellow musicians and music lovers. “When I was a child, I was obsessed with Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. All I wanted was to sing like they did, and I would go around the house imitating them. Then in high school I discovered artists like Tori Amos, Dave Matthews Band, and the Indigo Girls. That’s when I fell in love with songwriting as a craft.” She released her first album, Quarter Life Crisis, in 2006 to critical acclaim with its pop/rock musings on life, love and twenty-something angst. Singles like “Me With Me” charmed music lovers across the country and earned a nomination for Pop Song of the Year by the 2006 Independent Music Awards. Napster.com featured Arden as a Hot Pick on its pop page and Smother.net named Quarter Life Crisis an Editor’s Pick alongside Coldplay and The Dave Matthews Band. Her songs, both old and new, have a Top 40 sensibility while maintaining an honest and often quirky lyrical insight. Arden worked with eleven-time Grammy Award winning Rafa Sardina on The Elephant in the Room, the follow-up to her debut CD. The album captures her ability to blur musical boundaries with sounds that span from pop to urban and from indie to commercial while using complex arrangements that take the listener on a musical journey. One reviewer describes “The Elephant in the Room as a playful, imaginative, dreamy world in which Kaywin’s stories are told with a bizarre charm characteristic of artists such as Amos, Alanis Morissette, Rufus Wainwright, and Sarah McLachlan. Her tracks race from one end of the room to the other - via flirty and saucy single-girl anthems (‘Lights Out’, ‘Girl in a Man’s World’), and poignant and beautiful-in-despondency refrains (‘The Last Time’) - while consisting of a sound that is all-inclusive, never gender-specific in approach.” “The Elephant in the Room is simply fun, however complex in essence. I suppose you could even liken it to a brand new penny. Sure, there are a million others out there - but at the moment, they’ll never be as shiny as the one within your grasp.” Arden’s songs have been featured on numerous television shows on MTV, NBC, ABC and The WB networks. She recently wrote and performed the theme song to a new Discovery Channel show called “Deliver Me” and her music can be downloaded in Starbucks Music Cafes nationwide as well as direct to your mobile phone on the Verizon V-Cast Music Service. Arden has been nominated for a few Best of 2008 awards, including Musiqtone’s Indie Artist of the Year, DJ Copperhead’s Next Big Hit Top 10 Albums of 2008, and Rockwired Reader’s Poll Best Album for The Elephant in the Room, Best Female Artist, and Best Song for “Let It Go”. For more information visit www.ardenkaywin.com or www.myspace.com/ardenkaywin. |
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