Marianne Nowottny has been performing at New York City gallery and avant-garde performance venues since the age of 15. An autodidact and child prodigy, Nowottny captured the attention of playwright Lauri Bortz in 1998 with a hand full of homemade cassette tapes and high-school notebooks filled with prose. This material surfaced in 1999 as the CD "Afraid of Me" on the Abaton Book Company imprint. This debut CD was warmly received in publications such as The New York Times, New York Press, Wire Magazine and Magnet. Since then Marianne has released other recordings, including the 2001 double CD "Manmade Girl" which solidified her position as "one of the most important artist's of her generation" according to Joe S. Harrington, author of "Sonic Cool". She has performed on the same bill as Elliott Sharp, Cul de Sac, Genesis P. Orridge and Daevid Allen of Gong. With a unique appeal across the musical spectrum, she counts as her fans Jim O'Rourke, Matmos and Bernard Stollman of ESP-Disk Records. 

A constantly evolving songwriter and performer, her compositions exist in a state of flux, which allows her to articulate musical ideas and phrasing in an improvisational manner. Her individualistic keyboard work on radio shack keyboards, harmonium, and piano is unique with its moments of surprising harmonic complexity. Her haunting and unsettling vocals manoeuvre into bizarre uncharted areas producing deep, evocative textures, and revealing complex internal narratives.

Marianne Nowottny is 22 years old and a junior at William Paterson University in the United States where she is studying art education and politics.  She continues to explore and develop her compositional, vocal and arrangement visions independent of anything else going on in music right now.

Camera Obscura released her "Illusions of the Sun" in late 2002. More information on subsequent releases can be found on the Abaton Book Company Web Site.

Resources:

Abaton Book Company Web Site

CAM056CD - "Illusions of the Sun"

Check out the free MP3s on this page