"Is that why they call it falling? Is that why its called a heartbreak, because gravity is the nemesis of flight?" - Amber Jade, from "Say Goodbye
Story
A melodic and listenable singer-songwriter hailing from the lush landscape of the Hawaiian Islands, Amber Jade learned early on the secret to making la bella vita (the beautiful life) is all in how you see it.
Amber Jade, a native of Arizona, began writing music on the piano in her grandparents' basement at age 5. Early on she displayed an undivided passion for music, art, poetry and creative writing, and throughout her school years she became involved in various musical theater productions, choirs and musical groups, drawing and sculpting, writing short stories, and creating volumes of poetry which became a seemingly endless wishing well for song lyrics. This great drive for creative expression was fueled by a juxtaposition of inner turmoil stemming from the reality of her severely troubled childhood, and the heavy toll of upholding the façade of a pastoral life. Amber Jade balanced the contrasts between the sometimes violent home reality she dreamed of escaping, and the "real" world outside her door, and soon realized that it was impossible. |
When life hands you lemons... make lemonade! With music and nature weaving a backdrop for a new matrix, she became unwaveringly committed to creating the beautiful life she longed for, through a new consciousness illustrated by intentional vibration. La bella vita manifests through a deep reverence for the natural world and an intrinsic connection with the universal source, an inner place pointed to through song and art, a place she hopes to remind people to come back to for healing, connection and purpose. Filled with nostalgia, hope and self-reflection, critics and fans say her performance "conveys a certain vulnerability and humanity" that they find "refreshing." At age 19, after leading keyboard and sample-driven hard-rock, techno and dark electronica projects during her late teens, her producer Bill Cashman and some fans suggested she go solo and "find her voice." Her current bass player had just given her a guitar as collateral for a loan for his rent. So, she picked it up and learned to play in a matter of days. Within a few weeks she was in the studio cutting demos. Just a few months after that, she was touring regionally and then nationally as a solo artist. |
Touring took Amber Jade from coast to coast, and to nearly every state in the contiguous US, performing during the Olympics and NAMM, from coffee shops and living rooms to clubs and theaters. She recorded many live tracks, a live album, and has been included on multiple compilations as well as radio and TV productions. In 2000, her debut full-length album, “Breathe,” recorded at The Cavern Studios, was released on Watergirl Music Records, and received airplay on college and local radio stations across the US. The title track, "Breathe," a song about a drowning boy, is a poignant reflection on the loss of innocence and the desire to rescue the most naïve and innocent parts of ourselves. The entire "Breathe" album plays along this theme, full of sweet, catchy pop/folk tracks with a childlike flair while the lyrics reveal an inner battle to defend that purity which the artist holds most dear.
Amber Jade also released an award-winning collection of poems from Watergirl Music Publishing during that time, entitled "Being." After touring until 2004, Amber Jade took an extended hiatus to rebound from the life on the road. She moved to Nashville, TN, where she experimented with a few different musical projects , and then moved to Little Rock AR, where she simultaneously got involved in green real estate development and became the lead singer for the popular cover band “Big Stack.”
In 2008, she became part of the intentional/sustainable community at Breitenbush Hot Springs located in the pristine Cascades outside Salem, OR. She dedicated herself to living her lifelong dream of conscious creativity, the pursuit of sustainable living, and the evolution of the human beyond the trappings of the human condition.
After years of touring the country, writing hundreds of songs and a book, experimenting with performance groups from Nashville to LA, then living off the grid at a hot springs in the Cascades, and living under the sequoias on the California coast, Amber Jade fell in love with the breathtaking, wild and woolly Northwest Coast.
in 2010, she launched Luminaria Sanctuary, a retreat center and intentional sustainable community she created on a private mountainside in the stunning Northwest. Luminaria became a beacon of light for community members where they could explore and practice The Art of Evolution. Word spread across several countries as it became clear that this unique community and vision served a deep need for people to reconnect to nature, creativity, and personal growth.
Luminaria closed its physical doors a few years later so it could become reinvented as an online community and global hub for changemakers, no longer limited by a single physical entity.
In 2012, Amber Jade moved to the tropics of Hawaii to continue to pursue development of Luminaria's next evolution.
Since then she has traveled the world to explore cultures, study neuroscience, business, community building, economics, and to lead the systems architecture and visioneering for the Luminaria.
Along her journey, she began writing a book called "The 4 Forces of Influence™ - How Human Ecosystems Will Change The World and Reveal the Truth About Human Potential," and created Transformative Human Ecosystems™ (T.H.E.). which help to illustrate how emergent knowledge and technology can be applied to increase human potential and our collective ability to thrive in balance with people and planet.
Today, Amber Jade does her best to balance different forms of creativity as part of a Thriving lifestyle: music, art, social innovation, writing books and systems design. When she isn't writing, drawing, designing and thinking about all that, she loves a good movie (or even a dumb one), as much time in nature as possible, dancing, and cheese puffs.
Reviews
Reflections On Amber Jade's Live Performances
Reflections on Amber Jade's debut Album Breathe
Nationally Syndicated Press
The Albequerque Alibi
"It's easy to judge books by their covers. It's even easier to lump bands and performers into categories, seeing that so many exist these days. At first glance, it seemed reasonable to pigeonhole Amber Jade and her first CD Breathe into a genre with contemporary soft-rock artists such as Jewel or Lisa Loeb, but upon closer examination, she is much more than that.
"Growing up in sweltering Tucson, Ariz., Amber Jade began her songwriting career at the age of five tinkering on her grandparents' piano. She discovered the guitar at age 19, and the first time she picked the stringed instrument up, instinctively knew how to make it sing. 'I took it out of the case and started playing it,' she said. 'It was like I was possessed.' In less than one month, Amber Jade taught herself to play and managed to cut her first demo a few weeks later. Since then, she's been winning awards and making quite a following for herself in and out of Arizona.
"But, more than that, Amber Jade is doing her part to boost Tucson's smothered music scene. She formed the "mini-scale Lilith Fair" Tara Rising in 1998, for which she gathered about 10 female musicians and toured Southwest locations, mostly in Arizona, for a year. She is also using her home studio to record demos for female musicians who are ready to begin paving the road to stardom..." - Rachel Heisler, The Albequerque Alibi
The Arizona Daily Star
"Amber Jade dreams up a lot of her songs. 'I visualize my music a lot of the time, 'she said last Friday during an interview. 'I have no idea where it comes from, but sometimes I'll dream an entire song: score, strings, hands on the piano... The battle for me is remembering all the parts when I wake up.'
With as many as 450 songs swimming around in her head, Amber Jade has a tough time designing her concerts.
'You can't possibly play that many songs. My usual shows are 2 - 2 1/2 hours.'
Still, sometimes she'll play and play - and play herself out.
'I've been forcing myself to take a break. I don't realize how tired I get,' she said, falling over on the couch she was sitting on.
On the surface, Amber Jade's smoky-sweet voice powerfully dances over carefree-sounding songs, but the lyrics reveal deep thoughtfulness - maybe even pain and mourning. Amber Jade's voice sounds smiley and happy, but she likes to write dark songs loaded with metaphors about lost innocence and such stuff.
'Your Front Porch,'an extremely happy-go-lucky song on Breathe, isn't one of her favorites.
On it, alternative brass group Crawdaddy-O peps the sound up with bright, ska sounding blasts while Amber Jade sweetly sings about happily lazing on a front porch with a lover. She much prefers the song,'Breathe,' which tells the story of a drowning boy. Maybe whiling away time with a lover strikes a nerve.
Art powers Amber Jade's life. Her artful prowess includes graphic design and poetry.
Amber Jade published more than 60 poems last year in a book she calls Being. In it, she writes about deep emotions, heartbreak, and her perceptions of other people.
'I am a people watcher. I'm really interested in what makes others tick. It is very similar to the way I write songs,'she said. ' Some of it is just about being human, but most of my songs are about spirituality.' - Jim Purdy, The Arizona Daily Star
- "Singer and songwriter Amber Jade aims to reach listeners on a deeper, more personal level. Inspiration is her purpose, and she aims to create an honest connection with her audience. Amber Jade’s breathtaking style is all her own and is derived from a mixture of folk and newer pop and rock styles. She is a gifted writer and takes the wonderful storytelling and personal issues pertaining to folk singing, and combines them with mainstream music in order to reach those of a younger crowd who may need a little extra inspiration and direction in life. She is largely self-taught and naturally gifted..." - The World of Music and Dance
- "Amber Jade is more than a musician--she is a force of Nature. A good force. An uplifting force. The notes, the words, the particulars are all beautiful on their faces, but there is more than that. There are many good musicians, but this one, this Amber Jade, inspires. She brings in and out the best in people, and causes people to see the best in themselves, to bring it out of themselves. One cannot leave an Amber Jade performance, if one has a heart or a soul, without feeling great fortune at having watched one of this world's great souls, without feeling better as a person oneself for the experience." - Robert Peate, Natural-Light Photographs
- "Amber Jade is a captivating performer and seasoned entertainer." - 91.3 FM KXCI
- "Amber Jade rocks!" - The Arizona Daily Wildcat
- Amber Jade--Music that Centers
"'Captivating' is the word to describe Amber Jade's music. Truth attracts seekers: the cafe bookkeeper who looks down from the balcony office when Amber starts to play (the jaunty "Daughter of a Preacher's Son"), then slips into a side table's seat and lingers for a few songs before heading home at the end of a long day. The self-made anarchist who leaves his conspiracy-laden worldview for an eyes-closed, head-back, trace-of-a-smile five-minute visit to a more honest, pleasant, promise-filled world ("Dream In Color"). The sharp-dressed blonde who puts aside the travel magazine for a song's spiritual journey (the transcending "Fever's Lifting"). Captivating, connecting; this is music that centers.
"I don't want to compare her to other musicians--it's so rare that one hears a new voice. But reviewers have preferences, and theirs might not match yours. Here are mine: I like artists like Jackson Browne, David Wilcox, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Kate Bush, Sarah McLachlan, Dishwalla, Matchbox Twenty, Stephen Stills, Peter Gabriel, and Ellis Paul. And I like Amber Jade. If any of those names had you nodding your head, then you're in for a treat.
"A native Tucsonan, 26-year old Amber Jade has been making music most of her life; from piano concerts for chess figurines at age five and formal classical music lessons, to solo streetcorner performances and professional recording. At nineteen, a bandmate in need of rent money sold her his guitar; it was the missing piece. Within weeks she'd taught herself to play, written a few songs, and recorded a demo. In December, 2000, she released her independently-produced album "Breathe". After several shoestring national and international tours playing coffeeshops and small concert venues, she's back in Tucson--regrouping, trying out some new songs, and planning a new album.
"But what is it about Amber Jade's music that captivates, connects, centers? The well-crafted songs, certainly. Songs that go beyond one image, that are more than one clever line and riff padded to four minutes. These are songs that include metaphor, literary and biblical references, and tempo changes. These are songs that tell stories, that are personal, that are universal, that carry the blend of optimism and existential doubt we carry in ourselves, that resonate with what we know of the human condition, that remind us of the deep and multilayered truths and uncertainties we encounter in the passenger seat on a long drive, in bed in the morning, in a cafe on a Monday night.
"Add to this: playing that is spirited, crisp notes, clean chords, clear strong vocals. Add a voice that is alternatingly vulnerable and solid, plaintive and confident, breathy and insistent, soulful and angelic. Add a performance that is passionate, spontaneous, and honest. Add a musician and young woman who routinely asks the audience what they did today to be closer to attaining their dreams, who believes we all need more art in our lives.
"During any given performance, she may move between guitar and piano. She may play solo or with musician friends, including fiddle player Rob Paulus, whose warm violin is rich accompaniment to Amber's guitar and voice--like David Lindley's to Jackson Browne's (oh, to hear Amber play 'For a Dancer'). She may play all her own original songs, or make her own of such covers as Jewel's 'Who Will Save Your Soul', or 'Hallelujah', the beautifully haunting Leonard Cohen song made popular by Jeff Buckley.
"Amber Jade. She's versatile, attractive, honest, and talented. And for now, she's in Tucson. Get out a little, go see her play, put some more art in your life; slide into an empty side-table seat, sip a chai latte or sauvignon blanc, relax, relax, listen, let yourself center, and enjoy some wonderful live, real music. And then someday you'll be telling your friends in the beer line at Desert Sky, 'Hey, I've been listening to her for years.'" - by Michael Quigley, from The Downtown Tucsonan, June 2003
Reflections on Amber Jade's debut Album Breathe
- "Amber Jade is a real contender. I love Breathe! I want another copy! Keep your eye on this girl. She is really going places."- Huey Lewis of Huey Lewis and the News
- "I love this CD! The lyrics are heartfelt, the music soulful, and the vocals haunting and compelling. In particular, I find that 'Your Front Porch,' 'Hold You Down' and 'For My Sister' speak with a voice I wish I possessed. I was struck with their power the first time I listened to them, and with each subsequent listening they make themselves more a part of my psyche. I'm very impressed. ... it is a very well done endeavor. It is very much like the loss of virginity, I think: impassioned, but occasionally halting; raw, yet sympathetic." - Donovan X
- "Tucson has yet again thrust a local artist into the spotlight - this time, 23-year-old Amber Jade with the release of her new album, Breathe.
- "Her distinctive female vibrato, in combination with soulful lyrics, makes this album worthwhile. Too often, it seems, contemporary female artists are singing with rage and anger about hating some man or another. Amber Jade's nature-inspired album is a refreshing break from the standard.
- " Though her voice - and poetry connection - is most similar to Jewel's, those seeking a CD of leisurely-paced music, appropriate for lounging lakeside, will not find that on Breathe. Tracks such as 'Your Front Porch' and 'Hold You Down,' although not full-on rock tracks, attempt a more upbeat rhythm than the rest of the CD... The remaining tracks, are melodious and intertwined with beautiful instrumentation. Album Rating: B+!" -Maggie Burnett, The Arizona Daily Wildcat
Nationally Syndicated Press
The Albequerque Alibi
"It's easy to judge books by their covers. It's even easier to lump bands and performers into categories, seeing that so many exist these days. At first glance, it seemed reasonable to pigeonhole Amber Jade and her first CD Breathe into a genre with contemporary soft-rock artists such as Jewel or Lisa Loeb, but upon closer examination, she is much more than that.
"Growing up in sweltering Tucson, Ariz., Amber Jade began her songwriting career at the age of five tinkering on her grandparents' piano. She discovered the guitar at age 19, and the first time she picked the stringed instrument up, instinctively knew how to make it sing. 'I took it out of the case and started playing it,' she said. 'It was like I was possessed.' In less than one month, Amber Jade taught herself to play and managed to cut her first demo a few weeks later. Since then, she's been winning awards and making quite a following for herself in and out of Arizona.
"But, more than that, Amber Jade is doing her part to boost Tucson's smothered music scene. She formed the "mini-scale Lilith Fair" Tara Rising in 1998, for which she gathered about 10 female musicians and toured Southwest locations, mostly in Arizona, for a year. She is also using her home studio to record demos for female musicians who are ready to begin paving the road to stardom..." - Rachel Heisler, The Albequerque Alibi
The Arizona Daily Star
"Amber Jade dreams up a lot of her songs. 'I visualize my music a lot of the time, 'she said last Friday during an interview. 'I have no idea where it comes from, but sometimes I'll dream an entire song: score, strings, hands on the piano... The battle for me is remembering all the parts when I wake up.'
With as many as 450 songs swimming around in her head, Amber Jade has a tough time designing her concerts.
'You can't possibly play that many songs. My usual shows are 2 - 2 1/2 hours.'
Still, sometimes she'll play and play - and play herself out.
'I've been forcing myself to take a break. I don't realize how tired I get,' she said, falling over on the couch she was sitting on.
On the surface, Amber Jade's smoky-sweet voice powerfully dances over carefree-sounding songs, but the lyrics reveal deep thoughtfulness - maybe even pain and mourning. Amber Jade's voice sounds smiley and happy, but she likes to write dark songs loaded with metaphors about lost innocence and such stuff.
'Your Front Porch,'an extremely happy-go-lucky song on Breathe, isn't one of her favorites.
On it, alternative brass group Crawdaddy-O peps the sound up with bright, ska sounding blasts while Amber Jade sweetly sings about happily lazing on a front porch with a lover. She much prefers the song,'Breathe,' which tells the story of a drowning boy. Maybe whiling away time with a lover strikes a nerve.
Art powers Amber Jade's life. Her artful prowess includes graphic design and poetry.
Amber Jade published more than 60 poems last year in a book she calls Being. In it, she writes about deep emotions, heartbreak, and her perceptions of other people.
'I am a people watcher. I'm really interested in what makes others tick. It is very similar to the way I write songs,'she said. ' Some of it is just about being human, but most of my songs are about spirituality.' - Jim Purdy, The Arizona Daily Star