Jane Siberry
Jane Siberry ( ; ; born 12 October 1955) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, known for such hits as "Mimi on the Beach", "I Muse Aloud", "One More Colour" and "Calling All Angels". She performed the theme song to the television series Maniac Mansion. She has released material under the name Issa ( ) – an identity (as opposed to a simple stagename) which she used formally between 2006 and 2009. On 30 August 2005, Siberry was awarded the 2005 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award in music by the Canada Council for the Arts. Career history Childhood and early years Jane Stewart was born in Toronto in 1955 and was raised in the suburb of Etobicoke. She would take her subsequent surname, "Siberry", from the family name of her maternal aunt and uncle. Many years later, she would explain this choice by stating "this woman and her husband were the first couple I met where I could feel the love between them and I held that in front of me as a reference point." Siberry learned piano from the age of four, predominantly teaching herself and developing her own concepts of notation and structure. At school she learned conventional music theory (as well as French horn) and taught herself to play guitar by working through Leonard Cohen songs. Her first song was completed at the age of seventeen, although she had been developing song ideas since much earlier. Following high-school graduation from Richview Collegiate in Etobicoke, Ontario, and then the Canadian Junior College, Lausanne, Switzerland, Siberry moved on to study music at the University of Guelph, later switching to microbiology (in which she gained a BSc degree) when she found freshman music courses to be stifling. She began performing in folk clubs in Guelph, linking up first with singer Wendy Davis and then with bass guitarist John Switzer in a group called Java Jive. First three albums and Canadian success (1979–1986) Following the split of Java Jive in 1979, Siberry maintained both a musical and a romantic relationship with John Switzer (who would work with her on her first four records). On leaving university, she supported her work as a solo performer by working as a waitress, earning enough to finance and tour her debut album, the folk-influenced Jane Siberry, which was released in 1981 on Duke Street Records. The album was relatively successful for an independent release, enabling Siberry to sign a three-album deal with A&M Records via the Windham Hill label. As part of the deal, Siberry was able to release her albums on Duke Street Records in Canada while Windham Hill handled American release and distribution. Assembling a backing band of Switzer, guitarist Ken Myhr, keyboard players Doug Wilde and Jon Goldsmith, and drummer Al Cross, Siberry recorded her second album No Borders Here (released in 1984) for which she mostly abandoned the folk approach in favour of electronic art-pop. This coincided with a growth in support of new wave and independent music within Canadian broadcast media, including the