Joshua Kadison began playing piano and writing songs when he was 12; the influences on his emotional music include Cole Porter, Rodgers Hart and Gershwin. Kadison left his Hollywood Hills home after his mother died,
... Joshua Kadison began playing piano and writing songs when he was 12; the influences on his emotional music include Cole Porter, Rodgers Hart and Gershwin. Kadison left his Hollywood Hills home after his mother died, eventually ending up in Nashville. After being signed by SBK, he released Painted Desert Serenade in 1993. He is probably most known for one song, "Jessie" - and he took millions of listeners by storm with this worldwide hit.
A new CD was to follow - Delilah Blue in 1995.
By the beginning of '96, Joshua Kadison had gone from being an obscure singer/songwriter playing in clubs across the U.S. to bursting into the pop music world selling over 3 million discs of his own brand of story-songs in less than three years time. "It felt as if I had the world at my feet but it wasn't what my soul wanted. I felt I had learned all I could from my experiences in the pop music field. The lessons of fame and success and all that go with them were amazing but I knew there was much more to life I had to learn."
Joshua took an indefinite sabbatical to follow where his soul and the music called. First it was to classical music, studying the scores of Mozart, Stravinsky, and Puccini among others. "I had listened to and loved their music but now it seemed the masters were opening up a new world for me I had never truly been aware of." Next came jazz, studying modern harmony and the scores of Gershwin and Ellington. "And then came Miles Davis. I got so into 'Kind of Blue’. I lived that record for nearly eight months. I bought an old Martin trumpet from the 50's, the kind Miles played, and I began playing Miles' solos. Of course, I'm not very good but I love trying anyway."
During Joshua's musical deepening, one of the most significant things he did was to apprentice with a Native American sound healer for nearly three years until her death. "It was the strangest thing really. She found me as much as I found her. She told me I would be her last student. At the time, I didn't understand the profundity of that statement. From Otelia, I amplified my respect for both silence and sound."
The teachings of the now deceased have influenced Joshua's art immensely, for the more consciously we realize the sounds in our surroundings, and the more consciously we accept the healing effects of harmonies, the clearer do we see the magical powers of music.
Throughout his musical studies and his foray into the novella, Joshua's own songwriting never stopped. Kadison recorded two solo piano/song discs, "Saturday Night In Storyville" (1998) and "Troubadour In A Timequake" (1999) exclusively for his fan club and when time permitted he performed rare solo piano dates around the States.
And in '98, Kadison found time to write and illustrate his first novella, titled "17 Ways to Eat a Mango" published in the States by Disney's Hyperion Books and translated into five languages around the world. "It was a story that came to me like my songs do, as a waking dream. Katchumo, the main character of "17 Ways" wrestled with me in my imagination until I finally agreed to write the tale of his paradisiacal island called Sakahara."
He moved labels to EMI Germany and 'Vanishing America' was released in 2001.
On recording in Germany Joshua says, "'Vanishing America' had to be made far away from my homeland. You can never truly see into an experience, without a certain amount of distance from it, can you? Every song, every character, every experience is somehow quintessentially American, yet the record couldn't have been made anywhere else but on Lake Starnberg in the shadow of the glistening Alps. I would look up at the glowing snow covered Alps, one moment golden, one moment magenta depending on where the sun was in the sky, and I saw a glorious metaphor for the human soul, standing tall and staying true to one's self."
And as for now, with no recordcompany to back him up at the moment, he has just released his own website, where we can find new songs from Joshua!
It becomes clear that what Joshua Kadison is really doing is singing short novels set to music, weaving lyrics rich in detail, yet universal at the same time, with soaring melodies and masterful harmonic textures.
With platinum records in the US and Germany, and multi-platinum awards in Australia and New Zealand (and gold in a handful of other countries), Joshua shrugs off any theory of why his music struck a worldwide chord. "It doesn't matter. You have to play the music inside of you, the music you hear in your head no matter what's going on around you."
