Marla Mase

Accolades:

- Mase's multi-media performance concert SPEAK booked by NYC Summerstage 2013; June 15 & August 17
- European Tour April 2013
- China Tour September 2012
- Awarded 'Messenger of Peace' Title by Friends of the UN for visionary work as performer/songwriter.
- Piece of Peace Video: over 119,000 views
- Best Performance Artist 2012, Crunch Radio
- Top 10 Bands 2012, indiebandsblog

"Marla Mase's self-portrait on the front cover of her new album Speak Deluxe actually does speak volumes about what she sings. The animalized photograph of her face verifies that Marla is peeved-off about something, or maybe everything. She doesn't want mankind to cry craven, but to look at hunger in the eye and feed it. The intrepid and raw realities of her lyrics echo the need to break away and address the world with a "ROAR!" HuffingtonPost.com (April 22, 2013)

“In the spirit of legends such as Patti Smith, David Byrne, Frank Zappa, and Iggy Pop, Marla’s music is epic.” —Joshua Smotherman, midtnmusic.com

“Marla Mase is sitting on quite the powder keg with her new album “SPEAK Deluxe”, an offering brimming with passion, anger, pain, wisdom, and compassion. What was the last album you heard that you could honestly say that about? Embracing everything from rock and roll, punk and reggae to spoken word, electronic, and downtempo music, Marla Mase will appeal to fans of Patti Smith, Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, PJ Harvey and Ian Dury…….Marla Mase’s music and message is poised to spread in an industry starved for meaning.” MusicPerk.com (March 6, 2013)

"Marla Mase is truly a force to be reckoned with. The Renaissance woman has her hands in just about every cookie jar in the art world – singing, performing, spoken word, short stories, plays, monologues, and even erotica, because why not. With a strong fanbase all over the world, Mase has even carved a name for herself in the event planning world as the founder of PARTYpoopers and partySWANK, party planning companies for children and adults, respectively. Even with all these plates on her table, Mase still finds time to create mind-blowingly unique music that separates her from the sometimes homophonous indie/DIY music scene." RockNRollReport.com (April 4, 2013)

Marla Mase is a writer/performer/producer/singer/songwriter from New York City. She writes songs, plays, monologues, short stories, erotica, blogs, and poems. She is known for her gutsy, sexy, raw performance style and her intelligent lyrics and is regarded by her peers as being a true musical pioneer. Her songs, a mix of world beat, spoken word, funk, r&b, punk, soul, and classic rock-n-roll are infused with GLOBAL SOUL, the signature sound of Tomás Doncker, her guitarist, co-writer and producer . She is backed by his band, the Tomás Doncker Band.

Mase, just off a European tour in April and her first tour in China, where she was invited by the Friends of the UN to perform for UN GLOBAL PEACE DAY in Linzhou City, was given an honorary, “Messenger of Peace” award for her visionary work as a songwriter and performing artist. Her fans span the globe from US to China to Brazil to UK to Mexico and Eastern Europe.

Marla's latest release, the acclaimed album SPEAK DELUXE includes 6 additional songs that were not on the original SPEAK album: ‘Piece of Peace‘ the song she wrote for Global Peace Day, the reggae track AnnaRexia featuring Garrison Hawk from Method of Defiance and the legendary BILL LASWELL’s dubmix of AnnaRexia plus 3 other songs. AnnaRexia is spearheading the Imperfect Project or Love Your Ass Campaign, which Marla created to empower women to not only accept but love themselves and their bodies. Proceeds from AnnaRexia as well as emerging artist, Lael Summer’s track, The Good Fight (whose EP Marla co-produced with Doncker) will go towards theprojectheal.org, a non-profit org founded by two teenage eating disorder survivors, that raises scholarship money for girls whose families cannot afford to send them to treatment.

Marla is currently rehearsing her show ‘SPEAK’ ( http://speaktheshow.com ), which has been booked by NYC Summerstage 2013. SPEAK is a global multi-media concert/performance piece using live music, spoken word, dance and visual imagery to explore the themes of confinement, sexuality, body image, trauma, oppression (internal/external) and freedom as a means of celebrating the raw reality of our human condition as expressed through the eyes, bodies, voices of women. The music written by Marla Mase and Tomás Doncker is a fusion of rock-n-roll with world beat, punk, funk, electronica, reggae and soul, and is performed live with Marla Mase and The Tomás Doncker Band, along with a troupe of dancers under the choreography of Adrienne Hurd, and 7 actresses each of whom has a distinct voice and tale in the mythistories and archetypes that make up WOMAN. Film/visual imagery is designed by James Jankiewicz. The show is directed by Sara Berg.

Her debut album, the rock opera, A Brief Night Out (BNO), tells the story of a woman, having an affair, breaking-down, obsessing on war and re-assessing her life. It is also the soundtrack to a theatrical version of the same story that has been performed in New York City with Broadway Veteran Martin Vidnovic playing all the male roles and also as a one-woman show directed by Sara Berg.

Marla is taking the social-media world by storm. The music video of ‘Piece of Peace’ has well over 100,000 views, the opening track to BNO “Things That Scare Me” is being played on over 250 radio stations around the globe, and her album SPEAK is being played at over 100 college stations in the US.

Marla’s play, The Canarsie Line directed by Kathryn Rossetter, ran at The Bank Street Theatre to sold out audiences in 2002 and was invited to the Edinburgh Theatre Festival. Her play Man/Woman was work-shopped at the Abingdon Theatre in 2004.

Marla has her MA in Writing and Performance from NYU, is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and is the owner of PARTYpoopers.com and partySWANK.com where she has produced over 2500 events these past 18 years.

Most importantly, she is mother to two beautiful souls. She is grateful for her life.