Award-winning recording artist Rachael Sage has announced the release of her forthcoming full-length studio album, "Choreographic", due May 20 (MPress/ILS/Caroline). On her latest offering of self-described "ballet-pop", Sage delivers a musically ambitious and emotionally accessible tribute to her very first love: Dance. Fresh off the heels of her 13th song placement on Lifetime TV's Dance Moms, Sage and her music have reached an ever-widening audience since her previous release "Blue Roses", amassing over 9.5 million views on YouTube.
Connecting to her roots in ballet, the NYC-based Sage "envisioned each song as a fully-choreographed multi-media experience" while crafting the album. The result is an inspired set of piano-based chamber-pop merging orchestral elements with her signature blend of folk, pop and rock. "Making this album was a meditation on my lifelong relationship to ballet and more recently, to lyrical dance. Dance gave me virtually everything I cherish as an artist: melody, expressiveness, a sense of ensemble, a love of costume and fashion, and foremost, discipline." Accordingly, Sage has several dance-centric videos in the works including one for her first single "I Don't Believe It", which explores the topic of bullying and will feature 3-time national dance champion Kaci King, an eleven-year-old performer who reached out to Sage on Facebook.
Sage, who contributed piano and guitar on the album, is joined by top-notch musicians including violinists Rachel Golub (Adele) and Lyris Hung (Indigo Girls), cellist Dave Eggar (A Great Big World), drummer Doug Yowell (Joe Jackson) and guest vocalists Peter Himmelman and Matt Nakoa. Featuring 12 brand-new tracks, the album was co-produced by Sage and Grammy® winner Andy Zulla (Idina Menzel, Rod Stewart) and engineered by Grammy® nominee John Shyloski (Johnny Winter, Diana Ross). A special bonus track, a charming rendition of Carole King's "So Far Away", will be available exclusively on the iTunes version.
Sage, who attended The School of American Ballet as a teen and is also a visual artist and poet, was on tour in Europe during the recent Paris bombings. She returned home and completed her album with a renewed sense of focus, determined more than ever to distill her vision into something unifying and genre-crossing. "The quintessential definition of dance, to me, is freedom. We're in a moment where we realize how precious creative freedom is, and what a gift it is to be able to share it with each other, across all borders and boundaries." On disarmingly honest songs like "I Don't Believe It", "Heaven" and "French Doors", incisive lyrics and yearning melodies merge into something expansive. The lexicon of ballet may be French, but in Sage's hands on "Choreographic", ballet-pop becomes a decidedly universal musical language.
