Crystal Bright

Crystal Dawn Bright is a musician and multimedia artist from North Carolina. She is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music teacher, performance artist, theatrical director & producer, and holistic health coach / nutritionist. As founder and leader of the band Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands, she has released three studio albums and one live album, been reviewed internationally, and performed with the North Carolina Symphony. She won the North Carolina Symphony's Triangle Talent Search in September 2010 and released a music video in October 2011. The local YES! Weekly named her Best Singer in March 2012, Best Songwriter in May 2014, and Best Musician in the Triad in May 2015. Her music has been called "carnival folk, fairytale pop and gypsy jazz" and was described by the BBC as "a pleasant kind of bonkers."

Education and awards Bright was born in Annapolis, Maryland and raised in Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, where she began taking music lessons at the age of seven. After performing in numerous high school musicals, Bright studied Drama before earning a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She then earned a master's degree in Ethnomusicology from Florida State University Tom waits, Yann tiersen, Gotan project, Lhasa de Sela and The Tiger Lillies, Bright played in Mariachi, Balinese gamelan, Chinese, Ugandan, Brazilian Samba and Indonesian ensembles. The local YES! Weekly named her Best Singer in March 2012, Best Songwriter in May 2014, and Best Musician in the Triad in May 2015. She was featured as the Nimbit Artist of the Week on the PreSonus Studio One Blog in December 2014 and was featured on Band of the Day in May 2015.

Her singing has been described as "captivating and mysterious," featuring her "mystical, even otherworldly" vocal inflections. Her "operatic voice teems with ethereal beauty" and she plays many unusual instruments, including a musical saw, accordion, keyboards, concertina, adungu (Ugandan harp), bombo (Argentinian drum), with a degree from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York City. She practices through her company Crystal Bright Holistic Health. "Downward Spiral" took place on October 15, 2011, and illustrated the metamorphosis of a girl into a woman who exudes creative power.

Bright wrote, directed, produced and starred in the musical interpretive movement theater production "Illuminating and Transcending the Shadow," which featured her performing with her band the Silver Hands and a cast of 16 costumed actors. with three further performances at the Greensboro Fringe Festival's 10th Anniversary Showcase at the Cultural Arts Center's City Arts Studio Theater in January 2012. There were two performances on March 2 and 3, 2012 at The Flowjo in Carrboro, NC. "I had written all these songs and I needed help in creating a band and taking my music to the next level. The Silver Hands help me create something bigger than my own hands could." Danny Elfman, and Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione's The Dresden Dolls, Bright creates "a haunted, whimsical, multicultural sonic cabaret" – "the sound of dark fairy tales" with Bright's unusual and unexpected arrangements and time signatures. One reviewer wrote that "the Silver Hands understand the importance of a little chaos... especially among such beautifully orchestrated music." myths and dream archetypes, She prefers to write about society and culture rather than relationships.

Albums

Their self-titled debut album, Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands, was released in June 2010 to reviews praising its "experimental vaudeville" and "twisted carnival folk." It was mastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer Gene Paul (son of guitarist/inventor Les paul) at G&J Audio. and "a record for freaks and thinkers, healers and hippies, the cool and the curious and for people who just want a little more." Their fourth album, "The Absolute Elsewhere" was released in May 2015 with every song written to accompany a piece of art created by Rusty McDonald of DividingMe Photography. The album was featured on the front page of AllMusic.com who described it as "wildly eclectic, engaging and creative" with "no shortage of twists and turns."

Video

The video for "Drowned Out", from their second album, Muses & Bones, won the Best Overall Video award at the HearNC Music Video Festival at Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill, NC in December 2011 and won DrunkenMermaid's Video Battle of the Bands in June 2012. and at The Carrboro Film Festival at the Carrboro Century Center in Carrboro, NC in November 2012.

Following a private showing at DragonCon in Atlanta GA in late August 2018, the video for "Choke", from The Absolute Elsewhere, was released on October 23, 2018. Beginning in early 2016, the video, with a cast and crew of over 50 people, was filmed in 4 different locations in NC over the course of over 2 years. It features an alternate version of Crystal as a child, played by Rachael Skipper, wandering through an abandoned castle, Castle Mont Rouge, and surrounding field before encountering a mirror in a house of horrors and turning into the adult version of Crystal, played by Crystal herself. The adult Crystal is chased by inhabitants of the house as the song gets more intense at the end. The video for "Choke" was directed and produced by Ron Royster and filmed (and produced) by Craig Thieman.

Members Permanent members: Crystal Bright – Vocals, musical saw, accordion, keyboards, concertina, adungu, bombo, zheng, piano, guitar, vihuela Rotating members:

Jeremy Haire – Electric and nylon guitars Rob DiMauro – Drums Omar Ruiz-Lopez - Violin

Footnotes