Reprinted from the Rockville Gazette, June 24, 1998

Up close and personal: The hallmark of two folk singers bound for Rockville date

Folk singer-songwriter Maria Sangiolo is drawn to images of lonely landscapes--"granite slick with ice," "creaking stairways, drafty chimney"--and said her voice is best spotlighted in intimate settings.

"The thing that draws me to (folk) and the reason I fit so well in the genre is the intimacy of the music and the intimacy of the performances," said the 34-year-old Sangiolo in a recent phone interview. "I think my songs and shows work really well in sitting rooms and coffee houses. . . . My stuff gets lost when I play for 1,000 people."

Which she did three years ago opening for Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills & Nash) at a folk festival in Aspen, Colo.

It doesn't get more intimate than her upcoming concert Friday in Rockville, where the Pomfret, Conn.-based Sangiolo will play in a house basement. The performance is part of the Moore Music (In the House) series started in November by Scott and Paula Moore. The shows at the Moores' home are limited to 60 people and occur usually every month.

"If you sit in the front row, it's like getting a guitar lesson," Scott Moore said.

The lesson in Sangiolo's life is how a guitar saved her spirit.

"I love the guitar, the closeness of the instrument to my body and the sound of the wood and the strings," Sangiolo said. "I love how you can take it wherever you go. . . . It's always been my best friend and my refuge."

Raised in the Boston suburbs, she started on the guitar at 13, was encouraged by her family to enter a field more practical than music after college graduation and began a professional career direly unhappy. At 24, however, she began playing and touring professionally, but ironically she found herself inspired by desolate moments and topographies.

Folk enthusiast Victor K. Heyman, the host of Vic's Music Corner at O'Brien's Pit Barbecue in Rockville, said Sangiolo is set apart from others because she is not "navel-gazing," which he added is a problem for many folk artists.

"A lot of the folk singers ponder their personal problems and put it into music and you wonder, why bother? 'OK, so that's you, how about me' " said Heyman, 63. "But Maria's stuff is generally very much about the people in the audience as well as herself."

Speaking with a slight Boston accent (prominent when she says words that end in "er") Sangiolo said much of her love for music stemmed from her adolescence. She was the fourth of five children whose ages were so spread out that music was her "playmate."

Her latest of four releases, "Blue Earth" (Signature Sounds, March 1998), finds Sangiolo relishing bittersweet ballads. Or as Sangiolo would say, "emoting" the songs.

"She's got a very soft voice," Heyman said. "There's nothing strident about it. . . . In the first place, you can understand virtually every word she said, which is a very nice thing because her words are very strong."

The tune "Blue Earth" off the eponymous compact disk goes in part: "This blue earth, this mill town/Wear a smile, don't look down/This small cafe, only thing to do/The lovers look like me and you."

Her song "Singing Beach" also contains words that display rueful reflection: "Hear the seagulls cry/ Watch the waves jump high/See the tide go out and come back again/ Listen to the wind, close your eyes/ Fight back the tears for the lost years."

"I think I felt pretty lonely," Sangiolo said of why the self-penned material and also songs she chooses by other composers linger on melancholy moments. Many of her tunes were written on the road, between singing jobs in the Midwest.

"The prairie in the Midwest is just so engulfing, it just opens you up when you're traveling across the vast fields in the winter, when you're alone," she said.

She's no longer alone.

Married for the last two years to a Pomfret restaurateur, Sangiolo is six months into her first pregnancy. After her pregnancy, she hopes to continue performing but to keep her gigs close to home.

Opening for Sangiolo on Friday will be Sterling, Va.-based folk singer-songwriter Jerry Bresee (pronounced "Brah-zee").

"Most of us write about what we know, and what I know is commuting and business trips," said Bresee, 43, who for his day job designs training programs mostly for airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration. The finale to his song "Flying Home" is the recitation of the standard landing speech that flight attendants give.

He said his material, however, ranges from the humorous to the "starkly serious." His compact disk, "Skylight," was released in 1997.

"It's always been an addiction," Bresee said of performing. "It isn't even an option, writing and performing. . . . It became just an essential personal outlet."

Moore Music (In the House) is a smoke-free event scheduled for 8 p.m., Friday, in Rockville. Seats are limited. Donations of $9 are expected. For ticket information, call Moore Music at 301-309-0983.