Mezzo-soprano Molly Mahoney has been singing with Big Bands since she was ten years old and has since opened for artists including Peter Marshall, The Ink Spots, The Mills Brothers, Marilyn King, Don Cherry and The Modernaires. Ms. Mahoney also appeared in concert with Vinnie Falcone, musical director and accompanist for the late Frank Sinatra. After touring nationally with a jazz ensemble, she continues her love of performance of the American Songbook with Bay Area cabaret shows as well as with her debut album “Two for the Road” which features familiar favorites and rare gems from The Great American Songbook with pianist Grant Levin. Her musical theater credits include lead roles as Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, Anne Collier in 1940s Radio Hour, Maisie in The Boyfriend and Honey Wonderly in the Annie Award-winning original musical The Black Bird Sings. A stylistically diverse performer, Molly has been charming audiences and critics alike throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond with her “sublime singing”, “eloquence”, “memorable humor”, and “lovely” and “heartfelt” operatic portrayals. Molly has performed with many opera companies including West Bay Opera, West Edge Opera, Livermore Opera, and the San Francisco Opera Guild. Last year, Molly sang the title role in Iolanthe with Lamplighters Musical Theater, in a recorded performance which Opera News named one of the Top 12 Must Have Opera CD Releases of 2014. The glowing review highlighted the “simplicity and eloquence” of Molly’s performance as the beloved exiled fairy. Molly holds a Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Grant Levin is a multi-faceted contemporary pianist, band leader and writer of music who performs in various configurations from intimate settings to concert halls and festivals. His musical aesthetic is based on dynamics, showcasing the piano as an infinitely powerful instrument, allowing the audience to experience the sonic possibilities. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Liner notes for the album "Two for the Road": Sometimes I wonder: what happened to music? Switch on a radio today, set it to a random station, and what you’ll hear is machines singing to each other in the darkness, with barely a human in the loop. But music is a phenomenon of the body; it’s hands gesturing, throats and lips opening and closing. The tapping of a string, a finely modulated sigh. And it’s the hands that crafted the instruments, the fingers that scribbled the lyrics, the mouths that muttered the words over and over, trying to get them just right. The songs on Two for the Road were recorded in an intimate setting—a living room in Chico, California—in September 2011. Each was done in a single continuous take. The songs themselves, it’s interesting to note, show a keen awareness of time. Many are laments for the passing of the seasons (“September Song,” “The Summer Knows”) or invocations of thrilling and luminous moments in time (“Midnight Sun,” “My Heart Stood Still,” “Strange Enchantment”). Others, like Two for the Road,” “Speak Low,” and Irving Berlin’s delightful “Let’s Face the Music,” are calls to action, to live, love, and seize the present moment before it is too late. When you put on this CD you’ll immediately feel that Molly Mahoney and Grant Levin are in the room with you. You’ll feel the physical presence of two human bodies, two gifted performers, singing and moving and making beautiful sounds in real time. And if that isn’t a kind of magic—a strange enchantment, one might say—then I don’t know what is. - Troy Jollimore