412 NE Beech St, Portland, OR 97212
Creative Music Guild’s Outset Series launches its fall season with the first of two concerts featuring vocalist, violinist, and songwriter/composer Cecille Elliott and vocalist, pianist, and songwriter/composer Eulis Kay.
The duo will perform two sets of original music and improvisation, drawing on prompts, spontaneous ideas, and shared musical curiosity. The evening will feature a mix of new explorations and rarely performed compositions from both artists, creating an intimate space for risk-taking, discovery, and creative exchange. For this performance, Eulis will perform on voice and keyboard, while Cecille will move between voice, violin, and keyboard, with the possibility of a few surprises along the way.
Cecille is a multifaceted musician specializing in voice, violin, and viola. Throughout her music career she has taken on various avenues from orchestra halls and auditoriums to pubs and open mics. Her passion lies in the diversity of music, and how her instruments find voices around the world and in various genres.
The Outset Series highlights emerging and adventurous artists presenting new work in intimate listening environments, providing space for experimentation, collaboration, and artistic growth.
Cecille grew up in a household of string players and dedicated her younger years to learn violin and viola, playing chamber music and orchestral music in her hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. She received her Bachelor of Arts in 2011 from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan where she focused on voice studies. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
As a performer and creator, she has collaborated with various artists across the country to bring their projects to life, and she can be found performing regularly around Portland. She takes her singer-songwriter sets to local venues, creative writing being one of the main passions of her life, and drivers of her career. Locally she sings regularly with Resonance Ensemble and is recruited to sing and play for other local organizations and artists. She is a commissioned composer having written and performed two of those works for Resonance.
Cecille currently sings with Lyyra, a 6-voice women’s choir from the Voces8 Foundation, as the lowest alto of the group. They are signed with Warner Classics, and together have toured the United States and Europe bringing performances and workshops of many genres of choral music to audiences around the world.
She spends much of her free time buried in various forms of creative writing, and building her skills as a visual artist, with film, photography, drawing, and painting as her mediums of choice
Singer/Songwriter/Teacher/Yogi
“I think of myself as a musician, first and foremost. The music is most important and always has been. It’s been a constant companion, a friend throughout the years; never abandoning, never faltering, ever bending and yet never breaking.”
“I have always had a passion for creating, interpreting, and inspiring. These gifts — and I believe they truly are gifts with which I have been endowed — help me to be a sensitive and versatile musician, and to share my personality through the music.”
“As a teacher, I hold the unshakeable belief that every person can learn to be better at any stage of life; myself included. Talent is often overrated, and that can make people think that they don’t have a chance to be great. I feel that my role is to gently guide each student in a way that will help them (re)discover their own gifts. Often, the only thing that holds us back from being the very best version of ourselves is us. We can’t seem to find the strength or the vision to see past our own negative self-talk, or the discouraging words that we’ve carried around with us, and that traps us in a steep-sided rut. But I have seen and experienced first-hand that if you work hard (and long) enough, you can achieve even the loftiest of goals.”
Born in Los Angeles, California, Eulis Kay has been involved with music since age 10. The clarinet started him on a journey through several styles and genres from classical to jazz, klezmer to fusion. The love of melody soon fostered an interest in the tonal colors and versatility of the human voice, and High School saw Eulis embrace both instrumental and vocal music. After majoring in Clarinet Performance for 2 years at the California State University of Los Angeles, the urge for singing took over and Eulis switched his focus to vocal performance. This opened up a whole new world of performance opportunities including operas (The Medium, Hansel und Gretel), musicals (Little Shop of Horrors, The Fantasticks), choral groups (Five of Five a cappella, The Pacific Chorale) and stage shows (Disneyland Resort, Tokyo Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris).
Today Eulis spends his time at the top of a little house built of wood,
in a little studio built on dreams, making music, sharing stories, and imparting lessons built of decades, all while watching the light dance through the greenery.
