MARY LAMBERT IN CONCERT:
As the title of her 2014 debut album Heart On My Sleeve suggests, singer-songwriter Mary Lambert is not afraid to be vulnerable. In concert she combines passionate singing and poetic lyrics on songs about heartbreak, abuse, body image, and sexuality. Her incredible vocal range is simultaneously fierce and fragile -- one minute she'll croon in a delicate whisper and the next she'll belt out an opera aria with unbelievable ease. With a background as an award-winning spoken word poet, she also moves audiences with her talk-rhythm singing on songs like "Body Love", a confessional piece about body image that's astonishingly honest. But even though her songs are often emotionally deep, Lambert's sense of humor also shines on stage -- her audience banter is hilariously quirky, leaving ticket buyers utterly charmed.
BACKGROUND SNAPSHOT:
Mary Lambert grew up in Seattle and started writing songs and playing piano when she was six years old. She graduated from Cornish College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Music degree in musical composition and made a name for herself as a spoken word poet. She won Seattle Poetry Slam's 2011 competition and launched her music career the next year with her debut EP Letters Don't Talk. In 2012 she co-wrote and provided vocals for fellow Seattle musicians Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' gay rights anthem "Same Love", which appeared on their debut album The Heist. The song went double platinum in the U.S. and earned Lambert two Grammy nominations, one for Song of the Year and the other for Album of the Year as a featured artist on The Heist. Her debut studio album, 2014's Heart On My Sleeve, was released by Capitol Records and debuted at No. 29 on the Billboard 200 chart. On her first headlining tour in 2014, Lambert's emotionally charged live performances established her as an unmissable live act.
