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EAST BRUNSWICK – With a love of stories and folktales, singer-songwriter Kat Siciliano has often used this imagery as a theme in her music. Her latest effort − the single “From the Trees” − tells a tale of trees. The song was released on Dec. 19 – which also happened to be her 30th birthday.
It was a milestone and birthday gift to herself to share with others − and a “bow” to her twenties. “From the Trees” takes the listener on a journey sharing a love story between the sky and the ground through the eyes of the trees. An avid reader, Kat’s love of stories and folktales greatly influences her writing.
“This is my vision for the song,” Siciliano said. “It is a song that I wrote in 2014, but I feel like this year was just the year of me putting out things for a bit. I really like folktale tales and mythology and I was thinking about the trees as their own sentient society forest with folktales and mythology of their own to explain phenomena in their lives.”
Siciliano describes her music as a “mixing bowl” of “folk, jazz, pop, and musical theater.” This last year of her 20s was huge for the composer/lyricist.
It kicked off with her being named a winner of the 2021 “Write Out Loud” contest. Founded by Broadway alums Taylor Louderman and Ben Rauhala, the contest aims to create opportunities for and help grow the next generation of musical theatre composers. Her song, “Falling,” was recorded by Broadway actress Ciara Renee and released in March on the “Write Out Loud Vol. 3” EP. It was performed live at 54 Below by Eleri Ward.
As she hopes to write more for others, the exposure from “Write Out Loud” opened some doors for her and she is hoping to ride on that momentum, writing more for others.
Yet, Siciliano is no newcomer to winning prestigious contests or writing for notable musicians. In 2016, the year she released her first EP “Stories,” Siciliano placed as a finalist in the “John Lennon Songwriting Contest” for her song “Ghost Be Quick.” Since then, she has had the opportunity to write music for popular Philadelphia-area entertainment attractions, such as Adventure Aquarium and Eastern State Penitentiary’s Halloween Nights. Siciliano also penned songs for numerous popular jazz artists, including “Pastrami On Rye” and “Sun Comes Up” for Chelsea Reed and the Fair Weather Five and “You Don’t Have to Try” for Calli Graver.
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All of Siciliano’s music, including “From the Trees,” is available on all music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
Having majored in music with a focus on jazz composition and arranging, Siciliano writes songs for herself and others and performs with the Bachelor Boys Band, a wedding band. Her own band − Kat and the Hooligans − recently parted ways, but Siciliano released a number of band favorites in the EP “Farewell Tour“ in 2022.
“It was songs that we’ve been playing together but hadn’t released yet,” she said. “We’d been sitting on these songs for years. And also it was a goodbye to the band. Not in a bad way, but we all realized that our writing styles have changed and we’re pursuing different things. We still work together and we still play music together and we are all in the same wedding band. We all play music together still, but we realized that we wanted to explore different sounds and different things. So we called this the “Farewell Tour,” and it kind of put a button on the project that we’d had for some years.”
For 2023, Siciliano − in her own words − has “a lot of directions that I’m going in.” She hopes to release more of her own music, including some solo tunes and a children’s album. She also is working on a musical theater project. While Siciliano hasn’t acted since high school, she has performed and written steadily. Her ultimate goal is to write a show.
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“I love theater, and I like writing for theater,” she said. “So that is the plan.”
For more, follow Siciliano on Instagram @kat.thehooligan.
email: cmakin@gannettnj.com
Cheryl Makin is an award-winning features and education reporter for MyCentralJersey.com, part of the USA Today Network. Contact: Cmakin@gannettnj.com or @CherylMakin. To get unlimited access, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.