It's no surprise that Seattle-based Larry Murante is gaining a reputation as one of the finest contemporary singer songwriters to emerge from the Northwest in recent years. Larry’s two CD releases, Kiss Me One More Time (1994) and Water’s Edge (2000) have garnered critical acclaim from all over the country and parts of Europe. In the past few years he’s racked up a string of national and regional songwriting awards and honors including first place winner of the 1999 Wildflower Songwriting Contest in Richardson, Texas, a showcase finalist at the 1999 Falcon Ridge Festival in Hillsdale, NY as well as first place in the 1998 Tumbleweed Festival Songwriting Contest in Richland, WA, (Larry took second place in ‘99) and a top five winner at Lakewood, WA’s 1998 Lakefolkfest Songwriting Contest.
Larry grew up in the small rural town of Nazareth, Pennsylvania (also the home of Martin Guitars). In high school, Larry began singing in working bands of every kind. “In my late teens I was singing in a wedding band that performed a variety of styles including jazz, pop, swing, R&B and top-40,” he recalls. “In those early years I was also singing in rock cover bands and playing in top 40 groups in town on the weekends. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was listening to and playing acoustic folkrock music. My biggest influence from that period (and even today) were the early 70’s singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, CSNY, the Eagles and Jackson Brown.”
Larry’s voice today is a testament not only to good pipes but to years of training — which he’s done, logging over a decade of study with opera, jazz, and musical theater stylists among which was Metropoitan Opera veteran baritone, Frank Guarerra. A voice of smooth power and precise intonation and audiences love his show-stopping high notes: long sustained flights that inspire awe among many of his singer-songwriter peers. With those skills, he’s proved to be a “one-take wonder” in recording studios, as well and has sung on many Northwest artist’s CD’s including Annie Gallup and Heidi Muller and Janis Carper.
His songs are full of the sense of how lucky and fragile our lives are (most of us): to have music, companionship, family, a roof overhead, a semblance of mental health, food on the table and the opportunity to grow — these are gifts that in Larry’s songs seem tenuous, revokable, and tender. But if he never forgets we can lose everything, no one can tell you Larry doesn’t enjoy the gifts of his life. His joyful, high-octane performances are legendary. As a performer, he cranks out more watts with his powerful voice and acoustic guitar than most rock bands can manage with stacks of Marshalls. For many musicians, it would be enough to aspire to such dynamic performances. But for years Larry has had his eye on another prize as well: the ability to pack truckloads of story into a few minutes of song.
If the scale of Larry’s canvas is larger than the average contemporary songwriter’s, so is his approach to verse and rhyme. Though his songs are cleanly structured, he rarely writes himself into a tight formal box, and you can feel his narrator’s eye moving across the landscape like a great, kindhearted novelist who stops to probe gently into each of his characters and their desires (sometimes his own) before moving on to the next scene.
Larry tours nationally, performing a mix of folk concerts, festivals, radio interviews and house concerts and has shared the stage with such artists as: Greg Greenway, Pierce Pettis, David Broza, Cosy Sheridan, Laura Love, Michael McNevin, TR Ritchie, Joanne Rand, Jane Gillman, Darcie Deaville, Jim Page, Lisa Koch, Karen Pernick, David Maloney, Heidi Muller, Annie Gallup, Dana Robinson, Janis Carper, Johnathan Kingham, Caren Armstrong, Dave Nachmanoff, Paula Joy Welter and Marjorie Richards to name a few.
source: http://members.aol.com/larrymurante/press.html
