Biography
In New York City, in 1999 she released her first album, Imaginaryland, consisting mostly of original a cappella music. In 2000, Petra was struck by a car while crossing a street in Los Angeles; the resulting injuries forced her out of performance for several months. In 2005 she released the home-recorded album Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out (Bar/None), a complete a cappella rendition of The Who Sell Out. The project was suggested to Haden by longtime friend Mike Watt, who also gave her the eight-channel multi-track cassette recorder she used to make it. Funded in part by a Durfee grant and wanting to perform the work live, Haden created a new arrangement of The Who Sell Out for a ten woman a cappella choir called Petra Haden & The Sellouts. The premier live performance of the full work occurred in July 2005 at the Ford Amphitheatre as a part of the "sound." concert series.
She has also released a self-titled collaboration with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell.
She contributed to the recording of ØØ Void by drone metal band Sunn O))) and played on the debut and follow up album of Sunn O))) guitarist Greg Anderson's other doom metal band Goatsnake. The Haden Triplets sang the part of the "fates" in Anais Mitchell's 2010 release "Hadestown" on Righteous Babe Records.
She is also at work on a collection of songs with Yuka Honda, apparently with contributing performances by Sean Lennon.
In 2007, Haden recorded an a cappella cover of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" for the compilation album Guilt by Association Vol. 1. This arrangement of the song is very similar to that used in the Glee version of the song in 2009.
She performed on the soundtrack to the film An American Crime, starring Catherine Keener and Ellen Page, which premiered on Showtime in May 2008.
In 2009, Toyota commissioned Haden to perform three songs for television commercials for the third-generation Toyota Prius, including an a capella version of the Bellamy Brothers 1970s song "Let Your Love Flow" and worked as an arranger and vocal coach on The Sing Off on NBC, alongside Deke Sharon.
Haden played violin on "Sentimental Tune" by Tegan and Sara, off of their album Sainthood (released October 27, 2009).
Read more about this topic: Petra Haden
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)