Joshua Kadison

Joshua Kadison began playing piano and writing songs when he was 12 years old. Born in California's Hollywood Hills he hit the road at 16 in search of life's answers after the death of his mother. Almost immediately, Kadison began playing in various bars around the country, living and working in cities such as Nashville, Dallas, and Santa Barbara, Calif. "All of that time on the road was great therapy for me," he says. "It strengthened my soul and focused my songwriting -- however corny that sounds." After being signed by EMI Records, he released the critically acclaimed album "Painted Desert Serenade" in 1993. He is probably best known for the songs, "Jessie" and "Beautiful In My Eyes" - and he took millions of listeners by storm with these worldwide hits. VH-1 named Kadison the network's major video breakthrough artist of 1993 for the "Jessie" clip. The network aired the clip in its "What's New" category for a record-breaking 26 weeks. A new CD was to follow - the gospel-tinged "Delilah Blue" in 1995 which spawned the hit single "Take It On Faith."

Kadison sings story-songs in the tradition of Harry Chapin and Jim Croce combined with the deft piano of early Billy Joel and Elton John. The influences on his emotional music include Cole Porter, Rodgers Hart and Gershwin. He also cites James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Nina Simone, Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok as influences. "Novelists like John Steinbeck, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway also are major influences," Joshua says, "since I'm a lyricist studying the ways words are used, and I love to read, too. I like characters in my songs, and I write all the time, in buses, airplanes and hotel rooms. I think my best songs are written in hotel rooms."

By the beginning of '96, Joshua Kadison had gone from being an obscure singer/songwriter playing in clubs across the U.S. to multi-platinum success, bursting into the pop music world selling over 3 million discs of his own brand of story-songs in less than three years time. His tunes have been recorded by legends Joe Cocker and Smokey Robinson, and by country artist Billy Dean. "It felt as if I had the world at my feet but it wasn't what my soul wanted. I felt I had learned all I could from my experiences in the pop music field. The lessons of fame and success and all that go with them were amazing but I knew there was much more to life I had to learn."

Joshua took an indefinite sabbatical to follow where his soul and the music called. First it was to classical music, studying the scores of Mozart, Stravinsky, and Puccini among others. "I had listened to and loved their music but now it seemed the masters were opening up a new world for me I had never truly been aware of." Next came jazz, studying modern harmony and the scores of Gershwin and Ellington. "And then came Miles Davis. I got so into 'Kind of Blue’. I lived that record for nearly eight months. I bought an old Martin trumpet from the 50's, the kind Miles played, and I began playing Miles' solos. Of course, I'm not very good but I love trying anyway."

During Joshua's musical deepening, one of the most significant things he did was to apprentice with a Native American sound healer for nearly three years until her death. "It was the strangest thing really. She found me as much as I found her. She told me I would be her last student. At the time, I didn't understand the profundity of that statement. From Otelia, I amplified my respect for both silence and sound.” The teachings of the now deceased have influenced Joshua's art immensely, “for the more consciously we realize the sounds in our surroundings, and the more consciously we accept the healing effects of harmonies, the clearer do we see the magical powers of music.”

In 1998 Kadison found time to write and illustrate his first novel, titled "Seventeen Ways to Eat a Mango" published in the States by Disney's Hyperion Books and translated into five languages around the world. "It was a story that came to me like my songs do, as a waking dream. Katchumo, the main character of "17 Ways" wrestled with me in my imagination until I finally agreed to write the tale of his paradisiacal island called Sakahara."

Throughout his musical studies and his foray into the novella, Joshua's own songwriting never stopped. Kadison recorded two solo piano/song discs, "Saturday Night In Storyville" (1998) and "Troubadour In A Timequake" (1999) which he released independently and when time permitted he performed rare solo piano dates around the States.

When his label folded Kadison signed with EMI Germany and "Vanishing America" was released in 2001. On recording in Germany Joshua says, Vanishing America had to be made far away from my homeland. You can never truly see into an experience, without a certain amount of distance from it, can you? Every song, every character, every experience is somehow quintessentially American, yet the record couldn't have been made anywhere