Susan Salidor is an award-winning children’s music composer and performer and with the heart of a teacher. Her newest recording, Come and Make a Circle 3: Even More Terrific Tunes for Children and Those Who Love Them, is the third in the Circle series.
CMC3 has 18 tracks of brand new, original songs written for and inspired by young children, along with one cover tune, “We’re Building a Better World,” by Peter and Ellen Allard. Accompanying herself on ukulele and autoharp, Susan is joined by long-time collaborators Matt Yanny-Tillar and Peter Buttitta. CMC3 was recorded, mixed and mastered by Victor Sanders of Lakeside Media, Chicago, who contributed substantial bass and guitar parts. Karen Horwitz (piano), John Williams (accordion) and Nathan Inserra-Mousin (percussion) round out the fine band of musicians on Susan’s eighth album.
Susan’s first recording, Little Voices In My Head (1995), received an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Award and was named “One of the year’s five best children’s recordings” by Sesame Street Parent Magazine. Her second recording, Susan Salidor: By Heart (1996), was honored with a Parents’ Choice Gold Award for Excellence and received unanimous praise in the Chicago Tribune, Nashville Parent, Parents’ Magazine, ALA Booklist, and Family Fun Magazine, which called By Heart “an album to savor.”
Color Me Singing (1998), Susan’s third kids’ recording, was chosen as a selection in Book-of-the-Month Club’s Sound Review Catalog. Color Me Singing also a Parents’ Choice Gold Award, an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Audio Award 2000, as well as a “Listen Up!” award from Publishers Weekly. Her fourth recording, Shiny New Shoes (2001), was awarded a Parents’ Choice Silver Award and in his Chicago Parent review, Fred Koch writes that Shiny New Shoes “brims with delightful songs and is filled with expert musicianship.”
In 2008, Susan released Songs in the Key of Chai, a compilation CD that includes all of her recorded Jewish music plus a handful of new, original songs as a tribute to her father, Leonard Salidor. Come and Make a Circle and Come and Make a Circle 2 are winners of a Parents’ Choice Award and a NAPPA Award. The first Come and Make a Circle recording is also a winner of an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Award and an iParenting Media Award.
Susan has also been honored as a songwriter with several ASCAP Popular Awards for songwriting. In addition, the song “Color Me Singing,” is featured in a primary school textbook Making Music (Scott Foresman/Silver Burdett). Susan’s recordings are recommended in The Best of Everything for Your Baby (Krantz/Exley, Prentice Hall), and her song, “Ruby B.,” appears in the first edition of Ruby Bridges’ autobiography Through My Eyes (Scholastic Press). She has also published The Susan Salidor Songbook, a songbook and CD set of original music from her first four recordings. For several years Susan co-hosted “Kids Play Radio,” a weekly broadcast on Chicago’s WLUW 88.7 FM. Her songs can be heard on in-flight kids’ programming on TED Airlines, XM Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.
Susan’s concert venues include schools, libraries, colleges, theatres, children’s museums, music festivals and bookstores throughout the country. On the educational front, she teaches preschool music in and around the Chicago area and her music workshops (Sure-Fire Hits for Preschool Teachers, Sure-Fire Hits 2: Just the Songs, and Come and Make a Circle) have received rave reviews at professional teaching conferences nationwide.
She has presented multiple times for the national NAEYC conference, which draws 25,000 early childhood educators annually. Susan has served as an “Artist in Residence” for the Rockford Public Schools’ Early Childhood Program and for the Waukegan Public Schools teaching music classes and training teachers. Susan and husband Jay Rehak collaborated on a children’s show, Noah’s Ark: The Musical, which has been produced in both Chicago and Michigan. All of Susan’s recordings are available online at www.SusanSalidor.com, Amazon.com and CDBaby.com.
Susan and husband Jay have created dozens of YouTube videos to her songs, but they are most delighted by the hundreds of original videos recorded by fans of Susan’s music that can be found on the internet.
Location
Chicago, IL, USA
Website
