Sarah Hiltz
Sarah Hiltz is an emerging singer/songwriter expanding the alternative Canadian folk tradition with her latest album, Beauty in the Blue (2017), a compilation of songs and stories culled from her multiple journeys across Canada as a travelling musician on cross-country Via Rail passenger train, “The Canadian”. Hot off a UK tour supporting Canadian darlings Running Red Lights, Beauty in the Blue is Sarah’s first studio project featuring long-term stage collaborators, drummer Jordan Michaelis and multi-instrumentalist David Puzak.
Her first LP, How Many Fires (2009), landed her opening spots for legends Gordon Lightfoot and Ron Hynes, and, combined with her next two albums, Letters (2010), an experimental performance art piece, and Music For December (2011), a Christmas EP, helped Sarah secure a spot as a Top 3 finalist in a nation-wide competition for female singer-songwriters (She’s The One) in 2012.
A small-town kid with a longing to see the world, Sarah took a huge risk in the fall of 2011 and quit her secure job at a music store to snag a life-changing gig as a travelling musician on the Via Rail, where she sang and wrote her way out to the west coast and home again. Once back from her first train journey, inspired by the vastness and diversity both of Canada’s landscape and its inhabitants, Sarah recorded a folk-departure album of jazz standards showcasing her genre versatility, Til The Sun Falls (2013). The following year, she was asked to share her unique approach to music in a 2014 TEDx talk focused on the beauty and pain in the stories of strangers she met in her travels. Beauty in the Blue (2017), co-produced with Kevin Howley (Running Red Lights), is a response to those stories-- a full-hearted return to her Canadian folk roots, rounded out with the cross-country experience of her train travels and the desire to dive deeper than most pop artists her age with a rich voice that belies a soul in tune with the balance of both pain and beauty, suffering and art.
