October Project
Encyclopedia
The October Project is a pop / rock
Pop rock
Pop rock is a music genre which mixes a catchy pop style and light lyrics in its guitar-based rock songs. There are varying definitions of the term, ranging from a slower and mellower form of rock music to a subgenre of pop music...

 band that was signed to major label Epic Records
Epic Records
Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A...

 from March 1993 to June 1996.

The members of the band during that time were Mary Fahl
Mary Fahl
Mary Fahl is an American singer, songwriter and actress known for her work with October Project in the mid-1990s. More recently she is known for her solo singing and acting career. She released an EP Lenses of Contact in 2001, and a full album The Other Side of Time in 2003 on Sony Classical...

 (lead vocals), Marina Belica (keyboard/vocals), David Sabatino (guitar/vocals), Emil Adler (piano/vocals), and Julie Flanders, the band’s lyricist, who did not perform with the Project on stage at the time. Urbano Sanchez, the band’s percussionist, is listed as an additional musician on the two albums released by Epic, and appears in band photos from that period, but was not officially a member of the band.

The lineup since 2001 has been: Belica (lead vocals), Flanders (vocals), and Adler (piano/vocals). Both Sabatino and Sanchez occasional perform with the group live. The band has also performed regularly with Martha Colby (cello), Chris Benelli (percussion), and Craig Benelli (guitar).

Flanders and Adler are the band’s primary songwriters.

Early stages

Flanders and Adler began writing songs together while still in their teens growing up in Montclair, New Jersey
Montclair, New Jersey
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 38,977 people, 15,020 households, and 9,687 families residing in the township. The population density was 6,183.6 people per square mile . There were 15,531 housing units at an average density of 2,464.0 per square mile...

.

Flanders and Belica met as freshmen at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

. In their senior year they collaborated with Adler to write the musical revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...

 Measure By Measure. In 1981 they were accepted as a team into the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop
BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop
The BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop is a workshop in New York for musical theatre composers, lyricists and librettists.-History:The BMI Workshop was founded in 1961 by Lehman Engel and the performing rights organization BMI ....

, studying first with Lehman Engel
Lehman Engel
Lehman Engel was an American composer and conductor of Broadway musicals, television and film.-Work in theatre, television and films:...

 and then Maury Yeston
Maury Yeston
Maury Yeston is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist.He is known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine...

. Other students in that class included Michael John LaChiusa
Michael John LaChiusa
Michael John LaChiusa is an American musical theatre and opera composer, lyricist, and librettist. He is best known for complex, musically challenging shows such as Hello Again, Marie Christine, The Wild Party, and See What I Wanna See...

 and Gerard Alessandrini
Gerard Alessandrini
Gerard Alessandrini is an American playwright, parodist, actor and theatre director best known for creating the award-winning off-Broadway musical theatre parody revue Forbidden Broadway...

.

Adler and Sabatino met at a jam session
Jam session
Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. At the time Adler was finishing his Master’s
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 thesis in music composition at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

. Together with their friend, Paul Byrne, they started a music production company, Tritone Productions. In 1985 they built a recording studio
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...

 in a New Jersey garage, which Adler would eventually use to produce the first demo recordings
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...

 of singer/songwriter Lee Feldman and Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens is an American singer-songwriter and musician born in Detroit, Michigan. Stevens first began releasing his music on Asthmatic Kitty, a label co-founded with his stepfather, beginning with the 1999 release, A Sun Came...

' college band, Marzuki
Marzuki
Marzuki was an indie folk rock band from Holland, MI, with a significant fan base in western Michigan in the mid to late 1990s. They were especially popular among Hope College, Calvin College, and Grand Valley State University students...

. The October Project would use the studio as its home base during its developmental phase.

Flanders met Faldermeyer (later Fahl) in New York City and introduced her to Adler in the summer of 1989. The songwriters immediately made plans to form a band around her.

The band spent eighteen months in Tritone's garage studio refining their instrumentation
Instrumentation (music)
In music, instrumentation refers to the particular combination of musical instruments employed in a composition, and to the properties of those instruments individually...

 and arrangement
Arrangement
The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...

s, and occasionally changing their configuration. The initial lineup (as of October 1989) included Paul Byrne (guitar) and Mark Huntley (drums/vocals). Byrne and Huntley left after a few months. Sanchez was later recruited as percussionist and was invited to join the band, but declined in favor of retaining sideman
Sideman
A sideman is a professional musician who is hired to perform or record with a group of which he or she is not a regular member. They often tour with solo acts as well as bands and jazz ensembles. Sidemen are generally required to be adaptable to many different styles of music, and so able to fit...

 status.

The band was without a name during its developmental phase. The name "October Project" was inspired by the title of a file folder kept by Adler, containing chord sheets and arrangements, and which referred to their intent to book a first gig by the upcoming October--a goal they missed by one month. The band played its first gig in November 1991 to a capacity crowd at the Bond Street Café in New York City.

The band quickly earned a devoted following by playing regularly at many of the music clubs of downtown Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, including The Speakeasy, The Sun Mountain Café, Beowulf, CB's 313 Gallery, and The Bitter End
The Bitter End
The Bitter End is a nightclub in New York City's Greenwich Village. It opened its doors in 1961 at 147 Bleecker Street under the auspices of owner Fred Weintraub. The club changed its name to The Other End during the 1970s...

. It was at CBGB
CBGB
CBGB was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the...

’s that they were first heard by their future manager
Talent manager
A talent manager, also known as an artist manager or band manager, is an individual or company who guides the professional career of artists in the entertainment industry...

, Peter Ciaccia. They soon took up residence at the original Café Sin-é
Sin-é
Sin-é was the name of a music venue in New York City which helped launch the careers of several noted musicians in the early 1990s.-Original café:...

 on St. Mark's Place
St. Mark's Place (Manhattan)
Saint Mark's Place is a street in the East Village neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is named after St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery on 10th Street at Second Avenue. St. Mark's Place, which is a section of 8th Street, runs from Third Avenue to Avenue A...

, where they often traded sets with other artists of the time, most notably Jeff Buckley
Jeff Buckley
Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Buckley , raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician...

.

Major label

In 1993, the band was signed by Michael Caplan of Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony BMG. In November of that year they released their first album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

, the eponymous October Project, recorded in Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

, produced
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

 by Glenn Rosenstein and engineered
Audio engineering
An audio engineer, also called audio technician, audio technologist or sound technician, is a specialist in a skilled trade that deals with the use of machinery and equipment for the recording, mixing and reproduction of sounds. The field draws on many artistic and vocational areas, including...

 by Jay Healy. The band toured throughout the US for much of 1994, opening for several acts, including the Crash Test Dummies
Crash Test Dummies
The Crash Test Dummies is a Canadian folk rock/alternative rock band from Winnipeg, Manitoba, widely known for their 1993 single "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm".The band is most identifiable through Brad Roberts and his distinctive bass-baritone voice...

 and Sarah McLachlan
Sarah McLachlan
Sarah Ann McLachlan, OC, OBC is a Canadian musician, singer and songwriter. Known for her emotional ballads and mezzo-soprano vocal range, as of 2006, she has sold over 40 million albums worldwide. McLachlan's best-selling album to date is Surfacing, for which she won two Grammy Awards and four...

, and appearing on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. They produced two music videos that year, one for each of their released singles
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

, “Bury My Lovely” and “Return To Me.” The latter single was included in the soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...

 to the motion picture, Blown Away
Blown Away (1994 film)
Blown Away is a 1994 action film starring Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones. It was directed by Stephen Hopkins.-Plot:Ryan Gaerity , an Irish terrorist, escapes from his cell in a castle prison in Northern Ireland....

, starring Tommy Lee Jones
Tommy Lee Jones
Tommy Lee Jones is an American actor and film director. He has received three Academy Award nominations, winning one as Best Supporting Actor for the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive....

 and Jeff Bridges
Jeff Bridges
Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges is an American actor and musician. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart....

.

After a nine-city promotional tour of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 the band returned to Nashville in early 1995 to record their second album, Falling Farther In, produced by Peter Collins
Peter Collins (record producer)
Peter Collins is a record producer, born January 15, 1951, in London.In 1976 Collins was signed to Magnet Records and formed a group called Madison, along with Ziggy, Peter Spooner and Page 3 girl Cherri Gilham, to perform his pop song "Let It Ring"...

 and engineered by David Leonard
David Leonard (producer)
David Leonard is a Grammy Award-winning American record producer and audio engineer.-Production discography:* 1981: Chaka Khan - What Cha' Gonna Do for Me - co-engineer* 1981: The Go-Go's - Beauty and the Beat - mixing assistant...

. It was released in September 1995. A headlining tour of the US included additional players Julian Coryell
Julian Coryell
-Biography:Coryell was born in Pennsylvania in 1973 to famed jazz guitarist Larry Coryell and writer/actor /musician Julie Coryell, and grew up in Connecticut, New York and California. Coryell began playing the piano and drums at the age of 5, switched to violin at the age of 8, then to bass at the...

 (guitar), Kevin Jenkins (bass), and Craig Thatcher (drums). Among the artists who opened for the October Project on that tour were Joy Askew, Jane Kelly Williams, and Once Blue (composed of Jesse Harris
Jesse Harris
Jesse Harris is a Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter. He has collaborated with several musical artists including Norah Jones, Melody Gardot, Madeleine Peyroux, Nikki Yanofsky, and Lizz Wright.-Early life and education:...

 and Rebecca Martin
Rebecca Martin
((Rebecca Martin (born April 24, 1969, Portland, Maine) is an American singer and songwriter from Rumford, Maine. She and Jesse Harris formed Once Blue in the early 1990s and released a self-titled debut. In 1998, she released the solo album Thoroughfare....

).

In June 1996 the band’s contract with Epic was terminated without official explanation from the label. The band members decided to discontinue their mutual involvement, and the October Project was aborted.

November Project

Songwriters Flanders and Adler formed a new team, the November Project. The members were Mary Anne Marino (lead vocals), Julie Flanders (keyboard/vocals), Emil Adler (keyboard/vocals), Rob Friedman (guitar), Mike Visceglia (bass), and Doug Yowell (drums). The band was managed by Jeremy Morrison. In 1999, the November Project released a five-song EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

, A Thousand Days, co-produced by Adler and Friedman. In 2000, the group disbanded citing artistic differences.

A full-length album, partially funded by fans through the band's web site, and co-produced by Adler and guitarist Gerry Leonard, was in production prior to the team's dissolution. The album was not released.

October Project re-formed

After working together in the studio and performing at several venues as OP(iii), Flanders, Adler, and Belica chose to reunite in 2001, reviving the October Project. In March 2003, the trio released a six-song EP, Different Eyes, produced by Adler. In June 2006, a tribute album
Tribute album
A tribute album is a recorded collection of cover versions of songs or instrumental compositions. Its concept may be either various artists making a tribute to a single artist, a single artist making a tribute to various artists, or a single artist making a tribute to another single artist.There...

, October Project Covered, was released, featuring performances by sixteen independent artists of songs by Flanders and Adler.

The October Project was inactive from 2006–2010. A new web site was launched in July 2010, wherein it was announced that the recording and production of a full-length studio album is underway.

In 2011, the October Project announced two "Live at the Loft" shows, on July 21 and 22, at a private loft in SoHo
SoHo
SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...

 in New York City. The lineup was Belica, Flanders, Adler, Sabatino (guitar), and Chris Benelli (drums).

Related developments

Marina Belica
Current lead vocalist Belica has also been pursuing a career as a solo artist under the name "decembergirl." She invited former team-mates Flanders, Adler, Sabatino, and Sanchez to participate in recording a version of the October Project's single, "Return to Me", sung by Belica and produced by Adler. The cover became the feature track of Belica’s five-song EP, decembergirl, released in 2000. Belica also composed a full-length instrumental album, One Sky, released in 2003, produced by Randy Crafton and Chris Cunningham.
Mary Fahl
Former lead vocalist Fahl has been pursuing a career as a solo artist. Her writing collaborators have included Bob Riley, Ramsey McLean and Glenn Patscha. In 2001, she released Lenses of Contact, a four-song EP of her collaborations, produced by Jeffrey Lesser. Signed by Sony Classical, she released a full-length album, The Other Side of Time
The Other Side of Time
The Other Side of Time is the debut solo album from the American singer-songwriter Mary Fahl, released on May 27, 2003 by the newly formed Sony Odyssey label...

in 2003, also produced by Lesser. In 2006, Fahl recorded From the Dark Side of the Moon for V2 Records
V2 Records
V2 Records is a record label that is owned by Universal Music Group as of October 2007. The label was founded in 1996 by Richard Branson, five years after he sold Virgin Records to EMI....

. The album, produced by Mark Doyle and David Werner, is an interpretation of Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...

's The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon
The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in March 1973. It built on ideas explored in the band's earlier recordings and live shows, but lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their work following the departure...

. Following the restructuring of V2, the album was put in storage for several years. It is set to be released late 2011.

Studio and compilation albums

  • October Project (1993)
  • Falling Farther In (1995)
  • October Project Covered (2006)

Singles

The Project's self-titled major-label debut album included these singles:
  • "Bury My Lovely" (1993),
  • "Wall of Silence" (1993), and
  • "Return To Me" (1994).
    • This last was featured in the music score of the 1994 film Blown Away
      Blown Away (1994 film)
      Blown Away is a 1994 action film starring Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones. It was directed by Stephen Hopkins.-Plot:Ryan Gaerity , an Irish terrorist, escapes from his cell in a castle prison in Northern Ireland....

      ,
      starring Jeff Bridges
      Jeff Bridges
      Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges is an American actor and musician. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart....

       versus Tommy Lee Jones
      Tommy Lee Jones
      Tommy Lee Jones is an American actor and film director. He has received three Academy Award nominations, winning one as Best Supporting Actor for the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive....

      .


All three singles feature Mary Fahl
Mary Fahl
Mary Fahl is an American singer, songwriter and actress known for her work with October Project in the mid-1990s. More recently she is known for her solo singing and acting career. She released an EP Lenses of Contact in 2001, and a full album The Other Side of Time in 2003 on Sony Classical...

as lead singer.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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