Vivian Green, Smooth jazz Artist
This week’s Featured Artist took an interest in playing the piano, singing and songwriting at a very young age. She is a record producer, singer/songwriter and pianist, and her music is sexy, soulful and full of life. Meet the talented and soulful – Vivian Green
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Genre: Pop, R&B, Soul, Neo-soul
Vivian Green has been making music for most of her life. Growing up in the East Oak Lane section of Philadelphia, she received early training as a classical pianist and vocalist, and gained experience performing locally in jazz clubs and at weddings. She recorded demos of her own compositions through her teen years, and received her first professional songwriting credit when Boyz II Men recorded her “Dear God” on their platinum-selling album Evolution. Green also sang backing vocals for world-renowned soul singer Jill Scott.
Vivian’s increasing notoriety helped to win her a record deal with Sony Music, which released her first album A Love Story in 2002. The debut disc established Vivian as one of the year’s most celebrated new artists, spawning the urban AC/dance hits “Emotional Rollercoaster” and “Fanatic.” She broke new musical ground on her sophomore effort Vivian, which produced the Number One AC/dance singles “Gotta Go, Gotta Leave” and “I Like It But I Don’t Need It.” Vivian won rave reviews in such outlets as People, Rolling Stone and The New York Times, which described the album as “a stellar sophomore accomplishment.” 2010’s Beautiful, recorded after an almost five-year hiatus, boasted some of Vivian’s most personally charged, emotionally nuanced work to date. Along the way, Vivian has won a reputation as a riveting live performer, sharing stages with such diverse artists as Maxwell, Teena Marie, Chaka Khan, Betty Wright, Q-Tip, Anthony Hamilton and Common.
In 2003, Vivian made her film debut, portraying Billie Holiday and performing the Holiday classic “Love for Sale” in the Oscar-nominated Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely. Two years later, she appeared in the TV series American Dreams, playing the role of Brenda Holloway and singing Holloway’s Motown hit “Every Little But Hurts.” Vivian wrote the music for David E. Talbert’s popular all-star stage play Love in the Nick of Tyme, which debuted in 2007. Also in 2007, she guested on Guru’s album Jazzmatazz Vol. 4 and Cyndi Lauper’s The Body Acoustic.
The emotional insight and resilient spirit of Vivian’s new songs reflect her maturing perspective, which has been influenced by her experiences as single mother to her now eight-year-old son Jordan, who had suffered from an undiagnosed syndrome that threatened his life and required several surgeries shortly after his birth.
“Those experiences were very trying, but I’m proud of the person I’ve become through them,” she notes, “I have to be a happy parent so I can give my kid a happy life, so I can’t hold on to anger or resentment. I try to find the positivity in all things, because otherwise you release a whole bunch of negative energy that just comes back to you. After being told that Jordan wouldn’t live more than seven days, nothing anyone can do now is going to faze me. Once you’ve seen a miracle, it puts everything else in perspective.
“I feel so positive about my evolution, as an artist and as a person, and those two things are definitely related,” Vivian concludes. “I’m not interested in making sad or negative music, because I don’t want to be that person. A lot of R&B music goes heavy on the male-bashing, and some people still associate me with that because of certain songs on my first two albums. But that’s not what I want to put out into the world now. I want to embrace life and be a positive person, and I want to keep making music that expresses that.”
Biographical information courtesy of Vivian Green. For more reading seelinkbelow.
http://www.viviangreen.com/bio.html