Search - Sheri Miller :: Mantra

An authentic artist with deep emotional honesty, Sheri Miller's music is pure magic influenced by John Lennon, Etta James, Billie Holiday and The Beatles. With influences ranging from Beethoven to Fiona Apple, Sheri Miller creates beautiful yet edgy swirling soundscapes with her sensual, soulful voice and wise lyrics. Recorded in a gorgeous studio overlooking a blue crystalline lake hidden away in the deep forests of Connecticut in 2007, a bit of magic happened. An unusually beautiful and very special collection of songs came to life, forming "Mantra." Music made to touch that little spark in your soul. Born in a musical household in Long Island, New York, Sheri Miller grew up listening to her mother, an opera singer belt out beautiful arias in the night, while playing classical Debussy piano. Sheri s uncle, an accomplished recording engineer in Los Angeles, educated Sheri with his hand-made mix tapes of Pink Floyd, Hungarian Gypsy Music and Etta James. While at the University of Pennsylvania studying literature and poetry (in the same class as r&b singer John Legend), one Sunday afternoon, something magical happened to Sheri, completely changing her life. "I had been writing songs in my room for months, which was a 20-minute walk from the Penn jazz music room, which had all the practice pianos. And I knew I was definitely not writing enough each day because it was such a big hassle to walk those long blocks downtown. Over the next couple of months, I started dreaming steadily at night about keyboards, about buying a used keyboard. I clearly remember one Saturday night in particular, I had an extremely vivid dream about this small black, white and gray Casio keyboard. The next morning I woke up with the image of the keyboard still clear in my mind, and took a different, more scenic route that day, through an underpass of green trees. So I m walking, and there s this one-day church sale, where they had the exact Casio keyboard I had dreamed of the night before. I quickly ran to the ATM, bought the keyboard for $20 and started seriously writing my songs on that sweet, broken-keyed Casio from that day on. Since then, I believe coincidences are just visible lines in our destiny." After college, Sheri moved back to New York to Park Slope, Brooklyn, and made steady rounds at local open mics like The Raven, while practicing her acoustic guitar and keyboard for hours in her basement apartment. She immersed herself in the poetry of Charles Bukowski, O. Henri, Marcel Proust, Margaret Atwood and Maya Angelou. She melted into Ella Fitzgerald, The Beatles, classical music, Etta James, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding and Billie Holiday. Brimming with inspiration, Sheri developed her own sensual soundscape of hypnotic bluesy American soul meets classic British melodic-pop, hoping to have "Mantra" heard by music-loving ears extending around the world.