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The Long Journey of Moran Arad

June 18, 2019
Moran Arad is getting ready to take the stage again, and she thinks my first question is kind of funny. I asked her how it felt when she stepped on the stage to perform for the first time. "I'm not sure how I really felt when I stepped up on the stage for the first time to perform. Maybe because I have been performing all my life. When you grow up in a musical family like mine, it is difficult to remember how the music first entered your life when you were always surrounded by it." Her name is Moran Arad and she is a singer/songwriter, who made a name for herself amongst main stream musicians in the Californian music scene. "In my earliest memories, California was more of a dream than a reality," she says as she gets ready for her set. She told me earlier about how she grew up in Kibbutz Magen, a small community in the Negev deserts of Israel. She goes on to describe how mother and father were musicians and an early life shaped by a home that was always filled with music. "When my parents were working on their songs I learned so much about the amount of dedication to your craft singing and songwriting requires. From an early age, I knew what I wanted to be, and that is a blessing."
Her journey to California and her eventual music career began not in her childhood home, but rather in the Rimon College of Jazz and Contemporary Music in Tel Aviv. "The music industry is full of people that had such natural talent that they didn't need formal study, but I wanted to build a closer relationship with the music and learn more about the technical aspects of making music before I made a career out of it, "she said of studies during her school years "There is a lot to be said about letting yourself just love what you do before you depend on it to make your living." Moran would book her first professional performances in Tel Aviv, but even then she seemed to know that wasn't where her career was going. "The music scene in Tel Aviv was vibrant and energetic, but I felt the pull westward. I was going to take my chances in America." After University Moran's first stop in the United States was Ohio, and it was there that she received the incredible opportunity to train with and later perform with a legend. Bill DeArango has performed on albums of the greats: Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. "It was an honor to share a studio and stage with him, and it was this extraordinary experience that gave me my first break in the American music industry." She is referring to the hip hop band Prom Queen, which featured her on their debut album "Nothing is Forever" which was released in 2000. It was shortly after this that she got her first professional gig as a lead singer for the Ohio blues band "Stone Cold Blue."
She continued to work steadily in Ohio and worked to perfect her craft as a musician, but it wasn't until she moved to California in 2011 that things really started moving. Her eyes light up as she describes her first times performing at various venues in Carmel and other cities in the San Francisco Bay area. She became known as a great collaborator and booked a lot of performances in several Jazz ensembles. "I never really felt like I had made it, but I believe that the moment when I finally felt that I had arrived was when I had the opportunity to perform as a lead singer at Clint Eastwood's Mission Ranch. There was just something about that performance, a certain sort of magic as I was singing with the accompaniment of Gennady Loktionov, a movie score composer and a talented pianist, that made me feel that I had finally arrived where I was supposed to be.”  Moran Arad's journey took her from the deserts of Negev all the way to Pebble Beach, and she would cut her first album "Pillow" in 2014. Produced by Hagay Mizrachi of “Gemini Musiq", the album has a pop/alternative flavor with catchy lyrics and upbeat tunes. ”The album opened doors to me that I didn't even know were closed." Developing her music career in California, Moran had collaborated with Katana Alexander of K&Co. Media for a Grammy after-party show in LA at the Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. This performance was a collaboration with the upcoming Hip Hop artist "Topher". Christopher Topher Townsend, is a lyrical powerhouse, Mississippi Hip-Hop artist and the co-founder of the indie record label Be Inspired.
She continues and cheerfully relates how her performances like at the "Diva Nights" in Monterey, "Carmel By the Glass" festival, and Folktale Winery in Carmel gave her the chance to meet people who love music as much as she does. "The people in the audience, my fans, are some of the most wonderful people in the world.” She thinks about the question I asked her at the beginning of the interview again as our time is almost up. "I'm not sure how I felt when I stepped onstage for the first time, but I do know how I feel now. It feels right, and I feel free." Moran is a singer/songwriter that makes her home in Orange, Ohio. Moran is currently working with the film composer Mark Governor of Citysound Music on new songs and unique  masterpieces, as well as writing and recording her second album “Quiet At Last”, a world- music record, that is produced in Israel.

She was featured in recently released Lifoti's June 2019 influencer issue, you can check it from below link's for your country:

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