Deborah Eckman - Singer/Songwriter & Actress
"You can take me as I am
Or you can wait for time to heal
You can watch the layers fall
As I learn how to think and feel"
Or you can wait for time to heal
You can watch the layers fall
As I learn how to think and feel"
Hello and welcome!
Please feel free to browse these pages to get a better picture of who I appear to be......
Having originally trained as an actress/singer, I have also been writing and recording my own songs for the past 25 years or so. I regularly performed at songwriter showcases around London as well as in Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA and Vancouver, BC, where I have spent time.
In 1998, I began studying East Indian Classical Vocal, firstly at the Late P K Salve Academy of Fine Arts & Music in Nagpur, India and, more recently, with Shweta Jhaveri in Berkeley, CA and now fuse my original background of jazz/pop with Indian rhythms and phrasing.
"Deborah Eckman creates a rich tapestry of sounds including Indian rhythms, folk and jazz guitar in her contemporary songs. She has a powerful, haunting voice that smoothly changes between East and West.” (Up all Night Music)
“The mystical yanqin of Vivian Xia shines throughout the CD, perhaps most notably in “Waiting,” where it effortlessly dances between the beautiful, breathy vocals of Deborah Eckman, which weave in unison with Ji Rong Huang’s haunting Chinese erhu.” (Review of “3000 Days” CD - www.murraygrant.ca)
“Deborah Eckman's shimmering harmonies combine with sumptuously atmospheric soundscapes to create an intense and "beautifully crafted" musical experience with folk, pop-rock, jazz and flamenco resonances.”
(Review of ‘William Blake’s Songs of Innocence & of Experience’ CD - victorvertunni.bandcamp.com )
Please feel free to browse these pages to get a better picture of who I appear to be......
Having originally trained as an actress/singer, I have also been writing and recording my own songs for the past 25 years or so. I regularly performed at songwriter showcases around London as well as in Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA and Vancouver, BC, where I have spent time.
In 1998, I began studying East Indian Classical Vocal, firstly at the Late P K Salve Academy of Fine Arts & Music in Nagpur, India and, more recently, with Shweta Jhaveri in Berkeley, CA and now fuse my original background of jazz/pop with Indian rhythms and phrasing.
"Deborah Eckman creates a rich tapestry of sounds including Indian rhythms, folk and jazz guitar in her contemporary songs. She has a powerful, haunting voice that smoothly changes between East and West.” (Up all Night Music)
“The mystical yanqin of Vivian Xia shines throughout the CD, perhaps most notably in “Waiting,” where it effortlessly dances between the beautiful, breathy vocals of Deborah Eckman, which weave in unison with Ji Rong Huang’s haunting Chinese erhu.” (Review of “3000 Days” CD - www.murraygrant.ca)
“Deborah Eckman's shimmering harmonies combine with sumptuously atmospheric soundscapes to create an intense and "beautifully crafted" musical experience with folk, pop-rock, jazz and flamenco resonances.”
(Review of ‘William Blake’s Songs of Innocence & of Experience’ CD - victorvertunni.bandcamp.com )
I know it may be slightly confusing to some that I call myself a singer/songwriter, actor and artist but Hugh Laurie, one of my favorite actors, puts it rather neatly -
‘Worst of all, I’ve broken a cardinal rule of art, music, and career paths: actors are supposed to act, and musicians are supposed to music. That’s how it works. You don’t buy fish from a dentist, or ask a plumber for financial advice, so why listen to an actor’s music?
The answer is – there is no answer. If you care about provenance and genealogy, then you should try elsewhere, because I have nothing in your size.’ Hugh Laurie www.hughlaurie.net
Several years ago, I spent a lot of time researching the life and works of William Blake for a new play (see Stage & Screen & D E Designs/Artwork) as well as singing on an album of Blake songs by Victor Vertunni. Not only was Blake an extraordinary visionary, painter and poet, but he even designed a new way of printing that was the father of our modern printing press. He was all of these things, yet he never compromised his ideals or beliefs. In the process of this research I realised that, despite it being an extremely complicated way of living my life, I could not define myself just as an artist, or as a singer/songwriter or as a performer, as all of these are inherent parts of my personality and need to be expressed at various intervals. If I deny any one of these aspects for too long, it feels like a part of me is not breathing and I have to again give it room to exist. A marketing nightmare, no doubt, but somehow I feel I am getting closer to finding the key to fusing all these strands of my creative being together.
‘Worst of all, I’ve broken a cardinal rule of art, music, and career paths: actors are supposed to act, and musicians are supposed to music. That’s how it works. You don’t buy fish from a dentist, or ask a plumber for financial advice, so why listen to an actor’s music?
The answer is – there is no answer. If you care about provenance and genealogy, then you should try elsewhere, because I have nothing in your size.’ Hugh Laurie www.hughlaurie.net
Several years ago, I spent a lot of time researching the life and works of William Blake for a new play (see Stage & Screen & D E Designs/Artwork) as well as singing on an album of Blake songs by Victor Vertunni. Not only was Blake an extraordinary visionary, painter and poet, but he even designed a new way of printing that was the father of our modern printing press. He was all of these things, yet he never compromised his ideals or beliefs. In the process of this research I realised that, despite it being an extremely complicated way of living my life, I could not define myself just as an artist, or as a singer/songwriter or as a performer, as all of these are inherent parts of my personality and need to be expressed at various intervals. If I deny any one of these aspects for too long, it feels like a part of me is not breathing and I have to again give it room to exist. A marketing nightmare, no doubt, but somehow I feel I am getting closer to finding the key to fusing all these strands of my creative being together.