100 Bands in 100 Days Presented by Verity Credit Union — Day 63: Elijah Bossenbroek
Music fans of the Pacific Northwest, hello and welcome back to our third annual year-end daily countdown, 100 Bands in 100 Days, where every day until December 31st, we’re showcasing a new band or artist you have to know about, presented by Verity Credit Union. Follow the #100Bands100Days hashtag on Twitter to stay on top of all the bands featured and make sure to follow Verity on Twitter as well. Some days the featured act could be an established and locally-adored northwest-based musician that perhaps you haven’t been turned onto yet, and other times they could be a band with a small following that just hasn’t had their deserved time in the sun yet. Either way, we’re fairly confident you can come away from this daily segment with plenty of new favorites. Thanksgiving Day’s musical offering is a fantastic musician named Elijah Bossenbroek that now calls Gig Harbor home.
So far during this series we’ve covered a lot of different genres including rock, metal, blues, country, dreampop and many others but today’s featured artist is our first classical artist. Once you start listening to the first song by Elijah Bossenbroek you will realize in no time flat that this guy is not just any piano player, he definitely has world class chops. His compositions are meticulously crafted works of art, with Bossenbroek using the piano as his paintbrush and the world as his canvas.
Elijah Bossenbroek was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He started taking piano lessons at age six, but wasn’t a typical piano student. He often hated the dull repetition behind learning notes and playing to metronomes. Frustrated with playing by the rules, Elijah began writing his own piano compositions at age fourteen.
At the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where he spent the better part of 5 years traveling to places such as Mississippi, Japan, California, and Kuwait. He would find any opportunity he could to fiddle around on a piano, even taking a small keyboard to Kuwait with him in the midst of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Upon his return from the deserts of Kuwait, and working a few odd jobs, his Mom told him she would pay him two months salary if he would quit his job and record a CD. With very little persuasion, Elijah purchased a home recording studio and began working on his first album, and two months later Harmony In Disarray was born. This CD caught the attention of an A&R of A Matter of Substance Records and Elijah Bossenbroek signed on to have them help produce and market his second album Carpe Lumen.
Since then, Elijah Bossenbroek has bought out of his contract with A Matter Of Substance and is once again an independent artist and loving the freedom that comes with that. He performs throughout the nation for various art, wine, music festivals and small venues. He is also branching out into scoring music for a couple films and licensing his previous recordings for marketing purposes throughout the world.
If you want to hear something different that from what he have featured so far and appreciate intricate piano melodies, listening to Elijah Bossenbroek is an absolute must.
(You can check out Elijah Bossenbroek on Facebook and you can listen to him at his website HERE and watch the video below)
Submissions for 100 Bands in 100 Days are open(until the end of November) to any Pacific Northwest band interested in submission. If you would like to have your band submitted for a chance to be featured in this segment, consult this link for more information on how you can do so.
