Magda Hiller

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The succinct version - ...rhythmic whup-ass...soul-baring, image laden poetry.... fingerstyle guitar, swingy jazz with rich, earthy, shameless vocal mugging... Magda Hiller's career as a musically diverse, intelligent performing songwriter has had her opening shows solo for Chick Corea, Bob Dylan, Dan Fogelberg, Huey Lewis and the News and more. Magda has also shared the stage with Vangelis at London's Royal Albert Hall and Folk legend Odetta at the Ottawa Folk Festival. Hiller has won 'Best Acoustic Performer' and 'Best Solo Act' awards for years from multiple Florida news publications and worked considerably with Warner Bros. Publications as an instructor on their video/DVD guitar, song instruction series SongXpress. The release of her third cd 'Icing on the Cake' shows Hiller's musical growth beyond 'solo' and her ability to 'play well with others'. The story - ...still on the learning curve of the build-your-own-website so bear with me please. I am trying to write the bio or as I like to call it 'story' in installments. Cross your fingers for me please! 1st installment - up until age 19 (approx) My folks were friends of the 'hippies' back in the 60s and after a few of the hippies had come to stay at the house in Coconut Grove, FL I began my quest to learn the guitar. Nat, one of the guys was a player and I HAD to learn. Unfortunately at nine years old I was not disciplined enough and became frustrated. My folks separated and my mother, sister and I moved to Great Britain. At ten yrs old I attended a Rudolph Steiner school, Michael Hall in Forrest Row, Sussex. One of my classmates was Bella Freud, daughter of Lucian Freud and great grand-daughter of Sigmund Freud. Bella was very encouraging to me regarding music. She now is an incredibly successful fashion designer. I convinced the classical guitar teacher at Michael Hall that I could not possibly read music and that he would have to teach me by letting me watch his fingerings and picking patterns. Poof! I could play everything he showed me, it was great. I then started to learn Cat Stevens and Leonard Cohen tunes when on school breaks as those were the books that my folkie teacher had back in London. It was a real sponge time for me musically but had I known then what I know now......yes yes.....I can't remember ONE thing that classical teacher showed me because I didn't learn how to read music! Ahh. I sure did have a love for the guitar and for singing so I pursued the folkie stuff and writing and writing and writing. I went to Queen's College in London and had David Bedford as a music teacher. He was good friends with Vangelis and Mike Oldfield and some of us were picked to perform at the Royal Albert Hall w/Vangelis. It was an amazing experience at 14 or so. We also performed a couple times with Kevin Coyne, who had Andy Summers from the Police as his guitar player at the time. After working in the cloakroom at the Marquee I landed a job at DJM Studios. Dick James Music had all of the Beatles publishing and a handful of big acts on their roster, including Elton John and John Mayall.

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