Sarah Slean alternates personalities, by day she's the aspirant academic, lugging armloads of texts, by night fall she swaps her bookish eagerness and channels the statuesque baroness, a fictional grande dame whom she conjures to enamour audiences with her cabaret-chanteuse charms.

Slean recently returned from a seven month-long stint in France to her home in Toronto. After the transcontinental promotion of her kaleidoscopic album Day One (2003), the piano-pop sprite plucked a few tracks from her reservoir of live performances to release Orphan Music, a collection of songs for the musically minded, whimsical fugitives and circus strays.

"I just got back in September from France. I knew it was going to be quite a shift so I enrolled back in university," says Slean. "I'm taking philosophy and music courses at U of T. I'm such a nerd, I love school. I think I need to allow that period to gestate and ferment before it all is clear."

Slean is an opus of instrumentation, thought, poetry, art and fanciful idealism. In addition to the four studio albums under her belt - Universe (1997), Blue Parade (1998), Night Bugs (2002) and Day One, the avant-garde composer published a poetry anthology Ravens, starred in a cinematic film-noir Black Widow and assembled an art show with Canadian-based artistic director Louise Upperton of Arts & Crafts record label, titled Bleak House. Slean's playful, sinister bittersweet, adroitness resembles a children's storybook gone-askew. Read more>>

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