Australian musicians Fiona Joy Hawkins and Rebecca Daniel team up to create a remarkable piano/violin album titled “Heavenly Voices” – which is being released today!
This live-in-the-studio recording is a tribute to their musicianship skills and quality of heart they put into every note.
Get to know the artists
Fiona Joy Hawkins (Fiona Joy)
Fiona Joy Hawkins is inspired by Mendelssohn, Chopin, Ludovico Einaudi, Max Richter and Michael Nyman, and is an Australian Pianist, Composer and Singer. She enjoys and regularly tours China and the USA and is also a member of the Contemporary instrumental group FLOW (Fiona Joy, Lawrence Blatt, Jeff Oster, Will Ackerman).
Fiona Joy is known for ‘Grace’, her song on a Grammy Winning album in 2014 and for her extensive catalogue produced by Will Ackerman (Founder Windham Hill Records). In 2016 she won two categories of the Independent Music Awards at the Lincoln Centre in New York and has been awarded Best Piano Album by International Radio (ZMR Awards) for several of her albums. Nominated alongside Pete Seeger for Best LIVE Performance Album in the Independent Music Awards, Fiona was an ARIA Finalist in Australia in 2008.
Enjoy track no. 1 from “Heavenly Voices”
Fiona works with Australian piano maker Stuart and Sons, and has several albums with Blue Coast Records (content partners with Sony Music for hi-resolution releases), and is considered a female pioneer in a male-dominated audiophile world. Fiona is interested in new musical concepts and recording techniques to better serve the audiophile world and frequently appears on panels at audiophile conferences. Blue Coast owner/producer Cookie Marenco says, “Fiona’s melodic solo piano and masterful performances are the perfect music to debut the kind of clarity double DSD audio brings to the home listener’.
Living in a small village of 830 people in NSW Australia, Fiona has toured and played around the world at venues like New York’s Carnegie (Weill Hall), the New Orleans Jazz Museum, Sydney Opera House (MusicOz Awards), a live concert on Echoes/NPR Radio, has accompanied Deepak Chopra in NY, a concert for the Mason and Hamlin Piano Festival in LA, The Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, Glasshouse Port Macquarie, Sydney Women’s International Jazz Festival and the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, amongst others.
Fiona Joy Hawkins is best known for her romantic, melodic songs and lush arrangements. A prolific composer, she has always been interested in creating music that evokes images, emotions and tells stories. For more information, see https://fionajoy.com/
Rebecca Daniel
Rebecca Daniel started playing the violin at the age of four, and sang professionally in opera at the age of nine. When she was twelve she was the first child soprano to perform the role of Flora in Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw throughout the UK, directed by Sir Nicholas Hytner. She was a member of The Tudor Consort of Rochester Cathedral in England, and is currently a member of Blue Mountains madrigal group Canon Fodder.
Rebecca studied piano with Royal College of Music Professor Alan Rowlands, and violin and chamber music with Emanuel Hurwitz and the Amadeus String Quartet at The Royal Academy of Music London. She was a member of the Chamber Orchestra with Trevor Pinnock and Simon Standage, and was the leader of the Manson Ensemble, specialising in contemporary chamber works. She was a founding member of the Parnassus String Ensemble and toured the UK, before being invited to join The Australian Chamber Orchestra. She played with SSO and numerous orchestras before discovering the joys of musical theatre. Rebecca was the Orchestra Leader for Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera, The Sound of Music and Beauty and the Beast. She also played for West Side Story, A Little Night Music and The Hunting of the Snark. She has recorded and performed with, among others, John Denver, Bread, James Galway and the Chieftains, Will Ackerman, Shirley Bassey, John Farnham, Anthony Warlow, Barbra Streisand, Men at Work, and INXS.
Rebecca has collaborated with Fiona Joy Hawkins, writing, performing and recording for over a decade. They performed at the Sydney Opera House for the 2012 MusicOz Awards and were invited to New Orleans to perform at the 2014 ZMR Awards. Rebecca was recently concert master for a new opera by Rowen Fox at the Sydney Conservatorium, and has performed many concerts in the Blue Mountains with the Kanimbla String Quartet.
When not writing or performing, Rebecca returns to her home in the Kanimbla Valley, West of the Blue Mountains. For more information, see: www.rebeccadanielmusic.com
For more information and music samples, visit bluecoastrecords.com