I’m so happy to finally release the first piece from my debut recording project ‘Part of The Whole’. I began writing for this project, though I didn’t know it at the time, 4 years ago. I was living in a tiny apartment with my partner after a year long distance, we had both just lost a parent, I was about to enter my final year of undergraduate. It was all a lot to process…. I’m still processing it. After graduating, I took a year out and decided to write, create, heal.
I wrote ‘Moving Forward’ as a reminder to hold on to hope, the truths in life when your world seems turned upside-down momentarily. My Dad has just passed away and my perspective of life changed. I wondered what was really important in life, I thought about the things we give our time to and the words we tell ourselves. Ultimately, the song is a mantra to move forward, with trust.
A year later, the relationship dissolved. It was a tough time and somehow it seemed the song I’d written a year earlier, was the voice telling me it was OK to move forward.
It was February 2016, and I decided to apply for the master’s program in Contemporary Performance at Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain. (I had applied the year before but it wasn’t my time!) I doubted if I would get in. But when it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. I’ll always remember sitting at the kitchen table in my Mum’s house, with my porridge, opening the email that offered me a place. I didn’t know how I would make it work; the fees were nothing I could ever imagine raising. I worked two jobs that Summer and thankfully some people believed in me and in the music. I will be forever grateful for that. I swore I would go and record these songs, share them and let them go; a snapshot of a period in life where I sought out the light in the darkness. I leaped into music and it embraced me, taught me, as it always has.
The following year would change my life unimaginably. A lot has happened, I’m processing all of that too… one thing at a time!
Lyrics
Moving Forward
Very special thanks to the musicians and professionals involved in bringing my music to life: Scott Peters, Cliff Bond, Ricardo Osorno, Mauricio Ribeiro, Devin Malloy, Gilbert Mansour. I adore you all and will be forever grateful for the time we were given together. I know there will be more!
Yulu, thank you for believing in me, for giving me your energy when you had so little left. I am forever grateful for your friendship.
To little Robyn, the girl who inspired some of the lyrics by being a fighter from the beginning. Thank you for being a ray of light.
Thank you to my family and friends, to Brian, to Mario, my Mum and Dad. Without you the dream would still be a dream. I am forever grateful.
To you, the reader, the listener, the follower: thank you for taking the time from your busy life to share the music with me. I hope that it brings you something too; laughter, fun, understanding, peace, anything. Because if it moves you at all, my work is done.
‘Moving Forward’ is available from 18. 10. 2018. Listen below.
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Jennifer McMahon 