Kristilyn Robertson


Kristilyn Robertson
CD review: THE UNCUT VERSION
By Dan Brisebois

Hailing from Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Kristilyn Robertson’s 2003 debut is the result of nearly a decade of telling stories, and putting them to music. While struggling through the awkward years of high school, she found solice in the piano, and excelled in formal training. She joined the International Music Academy at Edmonton’s Alberta College, where she studied with an assortment of instructors and professionals, learning to expand her ivory repetoire to more than just Brahms and Chopin, and then enrolled at the University of Alberta.

Her debut album, THE UNCUT VERSION, initially came to be as a project while in her third year of university. The entire time, she’d been writing her own material, and played it at coffee houses around Edmonton when she wasn’t engulfed in her studies. Musician/fellow student friends were gathered by local recording engineer Tim Senger, and together they worked for months, arranging and experimenting with violins, flutes, violas, a full assortment of horns, and other instruments for her own material until the album was released in the spring of 2003.

The album is eight original compositions, all telling stories of life, love, loss, hope, peace, people, and friends. Tightly written and engineered, they’re stories that creep into your veins and warm your blood. Touching your soul, songs like “Under Venus,” “Masquerade,” “The Other Year,” and “Sound” show the maturity of a songwriter and the evolution of her prowess, touching your soul along the way. Her classical roots shine throughout the disc, that, and translating those elements into stories you instinctively relate to, proves there’s nothing but a bright future ahead for her.