A Mother’s Songs Brought to Reality by her Pianist Daughter

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland – or more accurately – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, has seen a resurgence with Johnny Depp and Tim Burton’s 2010 film interpretation but it’s Maria Russell and her mother, Gloria who make the classic story into a family’s epic composition.

Derived of songs composed by her mother when Maria was a child, Maria’s CD, called Wonderland Escapades: a Musical Dream, is the embodiment of a family project.

Maria, a Las Vegas-based pianist and arranger, has put together a three-act escapade drawn from the scenes, characters and set pieces from the well-known story.

Songs are sung by Shelley Martinsen and Dan Frank from the Nevada Opera Theatre, with the piano and keyboards performed by Maria, who has been performing with the Opera corps for many years.

Gloria originally wrote the first song, Dream Child as a lullaby for her daughter and the other songs evolved over the years while Maria took ballet lessons. She had no formal musical training so she sang the songs into a cassette recorder and had a number of them transcribed years later by a family friend, Francis Garziglia.

Unfortunately, Garziglia passed away before he finished the transcriptions and the songs languished for years until Maria was able to continue the tradition, after her musical training at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she graduated magna cum laude.

“About five years ago, my mom and I started talking about these songs and thought they might make a very good family and children’s recording project,” says Maria. “We started reviving some of the songs and made them more upbeat and contemporary. While they were originally conceived for a ballet, we realized they would work even better as part of a musical theatre production.

Because my degree was in piano performance, I knew I could create great arrangements and also finish some of the songs that hadn’t been completed. Our idea was to bring the project up to date, and because Shelley and Dan also do a lot of character acting and singing, I knew they would be perfect for the vocals.”

The result is a magical musical experience that brings together the talents of both mother and child to create something your whole family will enjoy. Wonderland Escapades is available for purchase on CDBaby.com and as a digital download on iTunes. To hear a sample and learn more about Maria’s journey for this CD, please visit this website.