She's being compared to the likes of Natasha Bedingfield and Alicia Keys and very soon Yorkton and area residents will be treated to her sounds.
Now based out of Toronto, Candice Sand has come a long way from her hometown of Melville and even farther from her roots of classical instruction as she works towards the release of her debut EP with Kuya Productions Inc (known best for their work and success with multiplatinum Canadian recording artist JRDN).
Sand, who left Melville about ten years back to study at Brandon Universty and later at Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton, spent the majority of her childhood immersed in music, receiving private classical vocal instruction starting at the age of eight. Her love for music carried her to Brandon University's Faculty of Music (Brandon, Manitoba) where she studied Opera, and later to Grant MacEwan College's Vocal Performance program (in Edmonton, Alberta) where she studied Jazz and all contemporary styles of music with a focus on Pop and R&B. She developed a wide variety of musical skills and after graduation, she turned her attention to songwriting and performing.
Sand moved to Toronto and immediately threw herself into the music scene. She began performing frequently at several venues in and around the GTA, while also networking and co-writing with songwriters in Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, and Nashville. By continuously performing and co-writing, she began to define and develop her own unique sound, writing songs with Pop elements and R&B grooves, elevated by her heartfelt lyrics drawn from her own personal life experiences.
As a result, she started to describe her music as: music to touch the heart and move the body.
Late in 2012 Sand received two "Demo & Commercially Released Single" grants from FACTOR Canada and she immediately teamed up with the Grammy/Juno nominated multiplatinum writing and production team Kuya Productions Inc.
Together, she and the Kuya Productions team dedicated 2013 to co-writing and recording her debut EP. Her debut single "I Got This" on iTunes in April 2013, paired with the release of the official lyric video (April 2013) and official music video (July 2013). The videos received thousands of views and following a tremendous amount of positive feedback from fans and industry professionals.
Currently they are busy marketing the release of the debut EP AgainstConcreteWalls which came out July 29.
Sand will be performing at Melville Community Works Saturday, August 30 at 7:30 p.m. (tickets are on sale at the Melville Community Works office $20. Visit www.bandsintown.com/CandiceSand for more details.
The performer says she still has plenty of family and friends in the Melville/Yorkton area she hopes will come out to enjoy the show.
"It's bonus of being on tour here because I get to see so many people that I love and haven't had the chance to perform for as a recording artist," she says.
