Shelley Thomas - World Class Vocals for your Event Singer from New York City, NY

GRAMMY-featured multi-instrumentalist Shelley Thomas (voice, oud, guitar, percussion) provides world class vocals and music for your event! Her depth of professional performance experience offers a rare breadth of styles to bring culture and class to your event. Her repertoire includes: Pop Jazz Brazilian Bossa Nova Original songs Middle Eastern Classical Italian Arias Renaissance instrumentals She can perform from solo to quartet, and provide top-notch quality musicians to fit your event needs. -------------- Bio: Described as “refined, imaginative, and gorgeous” by Beehive Candy, performer-composer-producer Shelley Thomas (voice, oud, percussion) blends Balkan, Arabic, Hindustani, Classical, Pop-Soul and African music styles in her compositions to create the emergence of a new genre: World Chamber Pop. With cinematic arrangements and inspired emotive power, she interlaces diverse threads of culture through a rhythmic, poignant examination into the human condition. Recognized for her extensive multicultural experience and attention to musical nuance, her depth of study and sensitivity have allowed her a rare breadth of styles including folk, pop, jazz, classical, traditional and improvisational world vocal arts. She has been featured in Audio Femme, Women in Music, Elephant Journal, and KCRW’s Rhythm Planet among other press outlets. Her work pushes the boundaries of musical archetypes in a reverent, spiritual and progressive aesthetic. She has crafted her own unique style by syncretizing methods absorbed from different genres of musics which she studied extensively for sixteen years with nearly forty teachers. She has taught workshops, recorded, performed and toured internationally with world-class artists including Black Sea Hotel with Yo-Yo Ma and Silkroad, The Knights, Kronos Quartet, and Brooklyn Youth Chorus; Simon Shaheen, Hassan Hakmoun, Bassam Saba and the New York Arabic Orchestra, Bulgarian Voices Trio, Brooklyn Raga Massive, AlSarah and the Nubatones, Yael Deckelbaum, Adam Maalouf, Jebebara Unity Drum, Innov Gnawa, and Mayssa Karaa. She has performed at venues and festivals including Moscow Conservatory, Lincoln Center, MIT, Joe’s Pub, Pioneer Works, National Sawdust, Vancouver Island Music Festival, and Abu Dhabi Festival at Emirates Palace. Past highlights include being featured on Yo-Yo Ma and Silkroad’s GRAMMY-Winning album, Sing Me Home, with Black Sea Hotel; performances in Morocco, Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Cuba, UAE, Lebanon, and across the U.S.; interview on MJ Dorian’s Creative Codex Podcast; and soundscape vocals for Panorama Festival’s 360 ARK Dome. Performances include Mediterranean Jazz Fest, Rockwood Music Hall, Toronto’s Drom Taberna and Small World Music Center, The Sonic Jungle, Ecstatic Dance NYC, Alex Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, Ragas Live Festival, Lund Choral Festival, Stallet Stockholm, BRIC, Le Poisson Rouge, SoFar Sounds, Alwan for the Arts, Yale Repertory Theater, Havana World Music Festival, Mexico’s Cumbre Tajin Festival, Prototype Festival, Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, and Fete de la Musique Beirut. Shelley released her critically-acclaimed songs “Mirror” and "Cancer Moon" in 2020, and her self-produced electro-pop EP, “Free” in 2022 under Symphonic Distribution. Her debut a cappella Bulgarian folk album Joy, was released in 2016. She received a BFA in World Music from California Institute of the Arts, and studied Mixing & Mastering with 343 Labs and Music Production for Women. She has taught with Canada’s FolkCamp, One World Brooklyn Kids Chorus, Music To Your Home and others in addition to private coaching. She attended Artist Residencies at Canada’s BANFF Centre (Persian & Eastern Traditions Program) and Vermont’s Avaloch Music Institute. She was a recipient of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts’ Development Grant, and has won grants from Musicares, Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, and Redline Contemporary Arts Center among other organizations. Current highlights include being selected for CBCA’s Advancing Creatives Intensive Cohort in 2022; feature in Shoutout Colorado Magazine; performing at the Bowery Electric NYC; signing with Assemble Sound for sync representation; receiving a scholarship for Muiscares’ Key of C Workshop in Nashville; and completion of The Music District's Sync Workout, a ten-week sync program for select artists. She lives in Weehawken, NJ and is in pre-production for her upcoming album for ten-piece world chamber pop ensemble. www.shelleythomasmusic.com “Lush orchestral arrangements guide you through a sonic journey to the beautifully haunted side of yourself...world music magic” -Audio Femme