Featured Artist - Cinnamon Tree

Cinnamon Tree combines the unique personalities of six individuals, resulting in songs that range from piano driven ballads to dark, ambient-noise drenched pieces and the odd pop punk anthem, written just for Jane Hung, the band's keyboardist/guitarist. The wide range of music written by Cinnamon Tree makes it difficult to label the band, or draw comparisons to others. The band's musical influences include Cat Power and Tom Waits.

What separates Cinnamon Tree from other bands is their vocal collages and rich harmonies. These are the threads that tie Cinnamon Tree together and are provided by vocalists Kristen Carter and Christina Gurton, who are as different as they are similar.

With a classical and musical theatre background and an interest in industrial/metal/ genres, Kristen epitomizes the range of the band's musical style.

Likewise, Christina follows no musical rules, happy to dance to both Lady Gaga and Ani Difranco. Christina credits Madonna and Sinead O'Connor for teaching her how to sing.

Guitarist Shane Oatman is the founder of Cinnamon Tree and one of the primary songwriters in the band. He enjoys coming up with the out-of-the-box song ideas and chord progressions that add to the musical range of Cinnamon Tree, much to the dismay of bassist Ivan Latendresse, whose punk-influenced playing adds an extra dimension to the band.

Rounding out the band are Zoltan and Liz Neff, Cinnamon Tree's drummer and violinist.

Cinnamon Tree has started playing shows in the tri-cities area and outside. Show-goers can expect to see a wide variety of music, with the occasional musical interlude. And as with any successful new recipe, the audience determines whether or not it works. In the case of Cinnamon Tree, it appears that the recipe has been successful in creating something unique which it is difficult to label.

For more about Cinnamon Tree and to preview their music, see their MySpace and Facebook pages.