Artist Kay Martin explores what we share as humans, as cultures—not only how people, their stories and their worlds are unique, but also what crosses those boundaries, what stories are universal—our trials and triumphs, our dance of survival and of fulfilling life’s promises. And for all these stories, these webs we weave, the common thread is love, with its peaks and plunges, its different forms—passionate, intense, tender, compassionate—that make life worth living.
 
What better vehicle for this love than music, for through music our perspectives change, we are shifted out of whatever rut we’re in and we’re moved, even unsettled, through music’s emotional and visceral pull. Kay likes to think of singing as a force of nature. Story, melody, and the uniqueness of each song merge into life experience through the vocal instrument.
 
Her CD softly recreates for us moments of love’s intensity that are crucial turning points—excited anticipation of love, or dread of loss to come—when pleasure and pain intermingle. At those watershed moments, the fulfillment of what we most desire carries with it the seeds of losing it.
 
In You Go To My Head, love’s fresh intensity is irresistible, with the thrill and playfulness of the Game, so that immersing in it—with all it promises, however illusory—is worth the risk of losing. But love takes many forms.
 
In Waltz For Debby, Kay evokes the experience we share as parents, when after years of nurturing, teaching, and loving our children we must watch them leave us. Such changes leave us feeling hollow, but we are learning that our love never really leaves us—it just changes and evolves into a different form.
 
Kay Martin reminds us how music can reawaken these intensities of pleasure and pain and wash us clean, just like in passing through the trial-by-fire of love and loss we are burned clean, and are at once complete—and ripe for the tender potential of new growth.