Kay Ashley
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Just saw "Men Who Stare At Goats" at BAM Rose Cinema--hilarious. Def worth a trip to the Theatre.
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Bio
It all started in a gravel pit in the North Maine Woods. A reluctant graduate student in geology, Kay Ashley was withering under the flinty stare of the noonday sun, hacking away at 10,000-year-old glacial sediments with an army issue hoe pick, all while providing lunch to the legendary northern Maine black flies—and she thought, "there must be something better than this." So, Kay decided to leave the rocks in the gravel pits where they belonged, and to return to her first love: music. This prompted a move to New York City's vibrant singer-songwriter scene, and the rest is but a nanosecond in geologic history.
About
Kay Ashley is a unique singer-songwriter whose influences range from The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, to Joni Mitchell, Michael Hedges, Nick Drake, and Hindustani classical music. Her music is impressionistic yet infectious; catchy yet harmonically adventurous. Her songs settle into your consciousness as if they've always been there, yet they take you on unexpected twists and turns.
Kay's debut CD, "Heliotrope," co-produced by Grammy Award winner Michael Leonhart (Steely Dan, Lenny Kravitz), will be released on March 24, 2009, and features performances by Michael Leonhart, Martha Colby (October Project), Raquy Danziger, Timothy Hill (The Harmonic Choir), elizabeth!, Jenny Goodspeed, Sean McCaul (Philip Glass), Bill Dobrow (Sean Lennon, Martha Wainwright), and David Pilgrim.
Billboard Magazine honored Kay with 4 top-tier Honorable Mentions in the 15th Annual (2008) Billboard World Song Contest: "Beautiful" placed in both the Folk and Pop categories; "Holy Man" placed in the World category; and "The Wind Is Gonna Blow You Down" placed in the Rock category. Kay was also selected to perform in the prestigious Folk DJ's Choice Showcase at the 2008 Northeast Regional Folk Alliance Conference. Kay has performed in many top New York City venues, including Rockwood Music Hall, Googie's Lounge/The Living Room, Banjo Jim's, and Columbia University's Postcrypt Coffeehouse, and has performed abroad at Sätra Brunn resort in Sweden. Kay has also appeared as a member of the David Pilgrim Band in both the Celebrate Brooklyn! Music Festival and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's BAM Café; and has performed at the New School's Tishman Auditorium with Marie Afonso (formerly of Zap Mama) and Ken Butler in Jenny Lynn McNutt's experimental multimedia performance piece "33 Swoonings." Kay has also performed at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall and on "Good Morning America!" with the New York Metro Mass Choir, and has also shared the stage (as tamboura accompanist) with Hindustani master vocalist Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan, bansuri flute virtuoso Steve Gorn, vocalist Sounak Chattopadhyay, vocalist Sabina Mumtaz Islam, sitarist Prasanna Kumar Thokchom, and pianist/composer Michael Harrison.
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