Pianist Faith Angelina’s debut release, “Reaching 12”, which was recorded when she was only 11 years old, received numerous complimentary reviews and won the coveted Zone Music Reporter’s Best New Artist award at the 2018 ZMR Award Weekend celebration in New Orleans.
Press release by Stacey and Ed Bonk
Without pausing to take much of a breath, Faith went about composing and recording her sophomore release, “Notes From Zion”. The title has a two-fold meaning for the young, budding artist. Zion National Park in her home state of Utah is a favorite hiking spot for Faith and her family.
In addition, the young pianist’s deep faith and love of God is likewise tied to Zion as it is the city in the Bible where Enoch resided and the city itself was taken up into the presence of God. Per the album’s liner notes, “To be Zion is to be pure in heart. To be one with God.” It is fitting that this new album is anchored by Faith’s feeling of being blessed with her musical talents and her opportunities to spread her gifts to an appreciative audience. Music literally saved her life and Faith hopes to repay her good fortune by enriching the lives of her listeners.
Listen to the album on Spotify:
About Faith Angelina
Life can be both cruel and kind. And in some instances, one or the other can be dictated by happenstance or circumstance. An event can set in motion a triumph or a tragedy. In fact, sometimes what starts out as one turns into the other. Such can be said about how Faith Angelina came to release her debut solo piano recording, Reaching 12.
Faith appeared to be a normal young girl, on the road to starting middle school in the summer of 2016. Appearances were, in her case, deceiving. The Sandy Utah resident penned a letter to her mother on August 8, 2016, revealing a staggering state of mind. In the letter, she revealed she was suffering a deep-seated depression and had come to the realization that death was the only answer, ending her note with the heartbreaking words “I hope you can think of me the same after this note, and know that me thinking about killing myself is NOT your fault.”
Thankfully, her mother found the note before Faith could act on her desperation. An immediate medical exam revealed not that Faith was clinically depressed, but that she had developed a hormonal imbalance. For over half her life, she had been waking in the middle of the night and wandering the house while everyone else slept. Luckily, modern medicine did its thing and the combination of the right prescription to address the imbalance, combined with the love and support of her family, put Faith on the path back to that of a healthy 11-year-old girl.
As it happened, this apparent tragedy blossomed into triumph. The close call awakened something in the budding pianist and her muse grabbed this metaphoric brass ring and would eventually run with it. Faith had been an avid piano player for a while now, and this affinity for the instrument gave her father the inspiration for helping her to continue to heal. In February of 2017, he took Faith to Stone Angel Studio (the studio of Stone Angel Music, a recording label which counts among their artists such piano luminaries as Paul Cardall and Ryan Stewart). As it turned out, Paul Cardall was (and still is) a friend of Faith’s family. He joined Faith and her father in the studio that fateful day. In a conversation with Paul, Faith asked him how many songs an album had to contain and he answered “Twelve.” During the car ride home, Faith told her father that she was going to compose, perform, and record those twelve songs by May of that year. As heartened as he was to hear her excitement, he was apprehensive about the aggressiveness of her goal. Was he going to be surprised! The album Reaching 12 saw the light of day sometime in June of that year, a remarkable achievement given that Faith had only turned 12 in April of that year (in truth, Faith composed all but one of the songs while only 11 years old). It’s interesting that the album’s title has a dual meaning: reaching her twelfth year and/or reaching that twelfth song needed to make the album “whole.”
Just when it seemed like her life was over, and the day was at its darkest, the letter to her mother, which called out from her deep pit of despair, portending a tragedy, ended up being Faith Angelina’s saving grace, a redemption which then led to her finding her young life’s calling. With such an amazing turn of events, followed by a debut recording which is already garnering positive feedback from critics and fans alike, one can only wonder if we are only seeing the tip of this talented young woman’s musical journey. The road ahead now seems brighter than ever for Faith Angelina.
To learn more, visit faithangelinamusic.com