Amanda grew up singing around campfires and began her career as a performing singer-songwriter when she was a teenager. Now as a teaching artist, Amanda brings her first hand experience as a professional working musician. Offering the perfect blend of knowledge to guide and inspire, her background studies span child development, feminism, cultural anthropology, spirituality and, of course, music. Amanda understands music to be our universal human birthright, and a potent medicine for mind, body and spirit.
Ritual and ceremony are an essential part of being human, helping to give meaning and definition to our place in the arc of time. “That was then, and this is now,” they explain to our spirit and heart. Though our busy 21st century life rushes us through the days, our human nature still craves the magic, presence, and deep knowing that ritual offers.
As the universal language, music crosses the borders of time and mind, and is a cross-cultural aspect of ritual and ceremony. Amanda loves to stand at thresholds, in the “time between time” and allow music to bring us there.
Her mother says Amanda was singing before she could speak, and began making up songs soon after. She learned her first 3 chords on the guitar at age 11, and immediately wrote her first full song (something about unicorns dancing in the moonlight!) But it was when she was a teenager, after serious car accident awakened her to the preciousness of life, that Amanda really dedicated herself to the path of music.
This path has since carried her around the world on two tours of Europe & the UK, as well as many times up and down the West Coast of the U.S. It has brought her to her life partner and co-creator of music and children, Pete Solomon, the multi-instrumentalist, Englishman of many hats. Together they have recorded and produced over five albums of material.
Amanda’s original songs explore humanity’s impact on the planet, muse upon time, the arc of a human life and women’s role in society. They offer intimate stories of love, and recipes for self-empowerment and cultural evolution. She sings of birth, death and the life in between, approaching music not as entertainment, but as a sacred form of healing art.
In more recent years Amanda has come to find great joy in community singing events, adding simpler songs to her repertoire that can be quickly learned through call & response. In whatever form she is sharing music, Amanda offers solace, connection and the resonance of light in the human heart.
