On March 17th from 6-8pm at O'Naturals (149 Great Road, Acton), pop-rock dynamo Kim Char Meredith (www.kimchar.com) will play an OWB benefit concert at one stop on her East Coast tour, which will include appearances that same weekend around the Boston area, as part of the WTQ (World Talent Quest) Live Music Series (www.worldtalentquest.com) .

Ricart Prats, WTQ creator and an OWB events coordinator--who also donated two WTQ concerts to our "Beat the Wave" tsunami-relief project--brought us together with Kim, who says that OWB "looks like an excellent organization and a great opportunity to give to the community". She has also recently played at the February concert series, "Women with Guitars" (www.womenwithguitars.com), which included six "guitar-slinging, soul-singing sisters" located in the Chicago, Illinois area.

Born in Illinois but moving as an infant to her father's home in Hawaii, Kim started writing songs in her Honolulu home at the age of seven and singing acapella in a church choir, and picked up her first guitar at age ten. Her early influences include country, pop, folk, Christian worship, and classical styles, with John Denver and James Taylor as two favorites. She recorded her first album of original tunes, "Spreadin' Out to Come Together", in 1987, and it was immediately hailed as "a masterpiece...with a diversity of style, range, power, emotion, and a beautiful voice".

Since then, Kim has received a Hawaii Music Award for "Favorite Pop Recording Artist" in 1999, discovered the wonderful world of women guitarists--Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow--and experienced the thrill of being the opening act for Melissa when she played in Honolulu. Kim has released seven albums in all, the latest--"Give And Take"--described as her best to date. Her music "is funky, direct, it pulses, it breathes, it's alive, and she holds nothing back". One reviewer at Amazon.com predicted: "within two years, her name will be a household word".

Kim moved to Chicago this past year to be closer to more opportunities to perform, and a few weeks ago attended a "Self-Employment in the Arts" conference (www.seaconference.org), which links students and aspiring artists with working artists, educators, and art-business professionals. The Friday night musicians' jam, highlighted by a number of artists joining in on one of her songs, is just the kind of unity in diversity we strive to create for our OWB festivals, so we are delighted and honored to have Kim join us for OWB 2005. Kim says of her music: "my main objective is to let everyone I come into contact with via music know that we are connected, that no-one is ever really alone". This is music making a difference at its finest, and something to which we can all say "aloha"!

See the event details...