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GENERAL BIO
(Delineated Bio)
Michaele
Alyras S. de Cygne (Alyras)
Alyras's music history
dates back to very early childhood, when she began playing piano by ear
at age two (2). Also being drawn to acting, visual arts and writing,
she progressed through childhood developing these talents, (acting
professionally in repertory theatres, exploring several forms of visual
art and sculpture, experimenting with machines, being a kitchen
chemist, plying her hand at starting and
leading bands and learning to play 16 instruments by the time she was
16 years old.) At that point, she began her professional music career.
While
attending high school during the day, she was performing nightly in the
clubs of Seattle, WA, as lead singer for "Tamaraw", a large band akin
to Tower of
Power and Seawind, (not the Scandinavian Rock band). Simultaneously,
she was (coming into full understanding of her transsexuality while)
learning to apply many of
her music skills to recording, writing and arranging her songs, then
recording all of the instruments herself. This led to her receiving a
recording contract offer from Ivory Tower Records, (Joseph Jackson's
label, [father of the J5, Janet...].) It was a dream come true,
but for personal reasons, she
declined the offer (on the eve of signing) and decided to tour. (She
would have been marketed
to the Black community under the name "Michael." There were chronic
similarities between her [as a boy] and Michael and Jermaine Jackson.
She chose to resolve
her gender issues before involving her life with those of the Jacksons
and subjecting that mix to the world press. Tremendous loss; right
decision.) From there she evolved
into
leading her own bands on tours of the western U.S. and gradually moved
into being Music Director for ensembles in Hawaii and Northern
California. After several years of touring, she left the stage and
headed to Los Angeles, CA, to pursue her recording career.
In
L.A., her
talents garnered the attention of George Murphy, who signed her to his
production company 8 Mile/John Lodge. Although she developed more than
enough material to meet her contract, the company's attention was
overwhelmingly focused on other artists and she departed the company to
open herself to other possibilities. This led to her working with Dick
Rudolph who introduced her to manager Brian Avnet and artists Don
Freeman and Warren Giancatarino. Brian added Alyras to his roster and
Don
and Warren created great tracks to which Alyras wrote lyrics and
melodies, forming songs that secured the attention of both John McClain
at A&M and
Jheryl Busby at MCA Records. John sought to unite her with Lenny
Kravitz in order to
form a band around them (as a songwriting duo, before recorded his
first solo album), while Jheryl was wooing her to sign a solo
contract. Following her manager's advice, she signed with MCA, shortly
after they bought Motown Records and just days before they changed
their Black Music business model to exclude artists like her, (Joe
Sample, Stephanie Mills, Gladys Knight and many others) from their
primary focus. That turn was coupled with her manager having personal
challenges that caused him to pare down his roster to a bare minimum,
though nonetheless international legacy acts). Along with that, all of
her allies who brought her into the company moved to other labels and
companies within two months of each other and 90 days into her
contract. The MCA move, loss of allies at the label and loss of
management was an heavy combination punch to her career, effectively
stalling her progress at Universal, so she departed the company to be a
free agent. Progressing through other directorships and developments,
she entered the realm of healing music and cognitive enhancement
software by translating the Mayan Sacred Calendar into sound. That same
year, her second child was born. Three
years later, her career was practically derailed when she contracted
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS); with that blow, (and her decision not to pursue fame,
in deference to her 2
sons, enabling them to grow up without the stresses from the notoriety
of her parentage being exaggerated by the media), her career
would take a back seat to childrearing and learning to live with CFS
until her kids were grown.
During the
first
several years of living with CFS, her body not supporting her making
significant progress as a recording artist, she
further progressed her development of cognitive enhancement software
while
pondering how to surmount CFS and regain her footing in the music
industry. In 1995, her ponderances led her to the Internet. Those being
the days of 14.4 and 28.8Kbs modems, she secured a PC and began
converting her demo tapes to mp3s, developing web pages and presenting
her music online, learning to troubleshoot hardware and software to
accomplish her goals. Eventually recovering from the intensity of CFS,
(using her own software), and needing to support a family, she took the
computer skills she'd developed and joined the AT&T family to
establish an alternate, technical career in the Information Technology
arena. Nonetheless, Alyras continued to progress her music career
through collaboration with L.A. songwriter/producer, Seth Hartman.
Together, (along with lyricist, Shy Hart), they established the
recording project, "Immortal Dream", creating an album based on Ann
Rice's novel "The Vampire Lestat." After going through the yoyo
of the
.com boom and bust in her IT career, the toxins
of life in L.A. proved
to be major and insurmountable facilitators of CFS for her - in fact,
they were killing her - so, she
relocated to San Francisco.
In
San Francisco, she
began
to return to the stage, with a principle role in the "Crazy Wisdom
Sho'", (the final show of the George
Coates Performance Works), sitting in at jazz clubs, performing as lead
vocalist with the OmniCircus Theatre, and eventually
joining the Transcendence Gospel Choir (TGC), the world's first all
transgender gospel choir. As Soprano Section Leader (and Assistant
Conductor), she journeyed through several milestones with TGC,
including leading
the Choir and other transgender singers in the first
international, all transgender GALA chorus during the GALA Choruses 7th International Choral Festival, performing "Bless Me", (the Prayer of
Jabez), in Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica. That event was part of a
string of concerts marking the first time the Basilica opened it's
doors to host LGBT performances and her performance was an high point
of the event, bringing many in the audience to tears. (Several of her
experiences with the
Choir were documented in the films, "The
Believers" and "Why We
Sing.")
After playing bass for the live recording of "Oh, Happy Day!", a
concert of sacred music pairing TGC and the San Francisco Gay Men's
Chorus, she left TGC soon thereafter, as
CFS began to encroach again on her capacities. After fulfilling a
promise and performing for a short
stint as a chorus member with the Lesbian, Gay Chorus of San Francisco,
(both her kids years passed the age of
maturity), she withdrew from ensemble performance to focus exclusively
on her solo
career. Pursuing her interests in multilingual music, securing all the
equipment she needed to work effectively as a self-contained artist,
she redefined her career and established herself as the Artist/Label,
"Art of Pop."
Being a multiple genre entity, Art of
Pop established its Profiles and conceived "The Archangel Diaries"
(AD) as a compilation platform. Released in Spring 2009, AD I blew away all stereotypical
limitations imposed on black, mainstream artists, establishing AoP (and
Alyras) as a music entity that is definitely in the pocket while being
out of the box. Having succeeded in neutralizing those limitations,
Alyras decided it was time to represent the Top 40, urban music roots
of her career and initiated the release of AD
II in July '09 with three songs representing a synthesis of
those roots and contemporary idioms. (AoP has paused the release of the
remainder of AD II until Oct. '09.) As AD II was being released, the
label began developing a tour program, in order to bring its repertoire
to the stage, thus the "Bridges" tour was developed. As a tribute to
MIchael Jackson, (Alyras being one of his unwavering, life-long fans),
AoP decided to include an a cappella version of Charlie Chaplin's
"Smile" as the penultimate number. [On September 3, (as a cleric),
Alyras (was inspired and so) spirit journeyed into the Great
Mausoleum at Forest Lawn, (Glendale, CA), from San Francisco, CA and
chanted "Smile"
(a la vocalise) into sacred spaces there, (during the scheduled hour of
his funeral, although it hadn't begun.) She recorded the experience,
thus establishing the chant version as both the right expression for
the show and as an historic recording. The recording of that expression is freely available, aiding others who
loved him through their grief recovery process.]
In October, 2010, as she was preparing to complete
production on albums
for all of Art of Pop's profiles,
in
a
matter
of
seconds,
Alyras
experienced
the
catastrophe
of losing
all the production data she'd generated since 2004; including all the
backups and the backed up backups. The data loss was the most grievous
experience of her career since the MCA deal; it would take a few years to restore the data.
Despite the loss, experiencing an inner peace that was far greater than
her dismay and grief, she prayed for guidance about what to do, which
direction in which to head. In brief, Holy Spirit told her that the
loss occurred in order to facilitate a shift in her career to
exclusively developing sacred music. Thus, in Q4 of that year, Art of
Pop officially became an inspirational music artist/label. Also, during
that quarter, the label's Dark Mother profile spun off its Tzolkin
software to a new division, Elvea Systems, thus freeeing DarkMother.com to exclusively focus on producing and releasing
sacred chant.
Presently, Art of Pop is fulfilling a
decades old commitment to the Divine
to establish a music ministry with her natal sister and brother, while carefully progressing through
preproduction on new albums for each of the label's profiles. After
recovering mixes of 9 songs, from before the massive data loss, she
released "The Unfinished Album"
in
July,
2011.
She
is
also
is
currently
negotiating global distribution for Elvea Systems inventory and expecting to release music
for
the label's profiles
beginning in Q4 2011, with no due date set for the album with her
siblings.
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