Susan Oetgen | Likeness to Lily

September 14, 2009

Interview with Likeness to Lily [26:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From their website:

Elegant and epic, realist and romantic, foreign and familiar - Likeness to Lily is a Brooklyn-based New Music quartet with a flair for telling syncopated stories in the patois of post-modern pop. Vocalist Susan Oetgen’s classically poetic melodies come from the heart of everyday life and love, and find pulse and passion in the jazz-inspired rhythms, harmonies and compositional savoir-faire of pianist Tony Melone, drummer Evan Pazner and bassist Ian M. Riggs.

Since forming in 2003, Likeness to Lily has performed regularly in the downtown music clubs of New York City, recently venturing forth to appear in concert series and performing arts venues along the East Coast, notably on the Vermont Arts Exchange’s Basement Music Series in N. Bennington, VT, and the Hump Day Groovz Series at Washington, DC’s Busboys & Poets. In 2005, Likeness to Lily independently recorded and released their debut record, Solitude’s Dollhouse, which features the song ‘Jewelia’, as heard on A&E Television’s prime-time reality show, Random 1.

In March 2008, Likeness to Lily premiered an original multimedia song-cycle entitled Bazm-o-Razm on the Brooklyn Philharmonic’s Music off the Walls series at the Brooklyn Museum, featuring chamber musicians from the Brooklyn Philharmonic, visual images by artist Justin Waldstein, Iraq War photos by Pulitzer Prize-nominee Alan Chin, and choreography by Sahar Javedani. Bazm-o-Razm was reprised at The Performance Project @ University Settlement in May 2008, and will be performed again on December 5, 2008 at Galapagos Art Space, for the occasion of Likeness to Lily’s Farewell, Recruit CD release. Farewell, Recruit contains the complete music of Bazm-o-Razm, as well 6 other original songs that integrate the dramatic depth of opera with tight, but conversational, song arrangements and ageless acoustic appeal.

For the full discography, see Music.
For a printable, downloadable presskit, see Booking.