My Sister Crystal Mesmerized CD

Crystal Hodges was born January 9, 1976 in a small hospital in St.Albert, Alberta. The last of four children and the only girl, she had a lot to live up to. Crystal started her musical endeavors fairly young. By the age of four she was singing solo pieces in the family's local church and beginning piano lessons that would eventually earn her a conservatory certificate for classical piano at the age of 14 enabling her to teach music lessons.Choosing not to further her teaching at the time, she turned her interest to writing music. It was a new realm for her to write music by ear but she quickly grew into a gifted songwriter, writing numerous songs in the following years, constantly increasing her musical repertoire.During that time and over the next few years a varied number of venues were showcasing her talent, from singing in a six voice ensemble at the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton in a musical, to Junior High School musicals at the Arden theatre, to singing for fashion shows and beauty pageants. After graduating from High School in 1993 she moved to Vancouver and continued to sing for private parties, weddings, and conferences, finishing her time in Vancouver with a show at the Hard Rock Café performing her original music with a full band.While in Vancouver she also began to focus on other aspects of her artistic nature. Crystal was accepted into the theatre program at Douglas College and continued her acting development at Vancouver Film School, where she graduated and worked as a student teacher for a short period of time. While her interest in acting never dwindled, she took a brief hiatus from acting to pursue dance as well. Much time was spent over the next five years choreographing and teaching dance on a volunteer basis for motivational youth programs in and around the city. In that time dancing also took her on short excursions from Vancouver to Saskatchewan and all the way to El Paso, Texas, where she volunteered for six months as a dance teacher for a drop-in centre for youth. Still nurturing her love for theatre during this time, she wrote two multi-media plays that were performed across Canada in High Schools and in a number of countries around the world promoting youth awareness and positive thinking. The plays were a combination of theatre acting, dance and media, and she developed the shows not only by writing the plays, but also by choreographing and teaching the dance pieces, and directing the shows themselves. Crystal made a significant move to Calgary in September 2001, after spending the summer teaching dance and performing music across Canada for youth camps and programs. It was then that her musical aims were renewed. Her passion for writing music had been unceasing during all her other accomplishments over the years. She had endless poems and songs in journals that had been steadily growing and becoming increasingly stronger in lyrical content and melody. Her desire to record had also been growing but she wanted to wait until she felt it was the right time to do so.In December of 2001 Crystal acquired her first guitar and proceeded to teach herself how to play, and almost immediately wrote four songs, three of which are on her current CD. In the process of the next year she compiled a number of songs on the piano and guitar and made the decision to record. The recording project, which originally began as a three song demo, quickly developed into a full CD and thus launched her drive towards a solid career in music.