The former Community Music School student, who graduated from Minnechaug Regional High School, has a debut album and MTV deal.
Hampden native Abby Bernstein, a 23-year-old New York City-based singer-songwriter, will open for the Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies in San Diego on May 25.HAMPDEN – Abby Bernstein has made the leap from singing at the Community Music School of Springfield to opening for a Canadian alt-rock band in San Diego.
The 23-year-old Hampden native will open for Barenaked Ladies in San Diego on Wednesday.
Now living in New York, the singer-songwriter recently released her debut album “I’m Not Sorry” and signed a deal for her music to be used on MTV.
In a telephone interview, Bernstein said she’s excited about opening for Barenaked Ladies.
“It’s very exciting,” said the former student at the Community Music School, where she began studying voice when she was 10. “(Barenaked Ladies) really influenced me as songwriters.”
She likes the group’s catchy and witty lyrics and the way they turn a phrase.
“Every word has equal amount of meaning,” she said. “I appreciate as a songwriter that there aren’t any throw-away words.”
“I’m Not Sorry” was produced by Adam Blackstone of The Roots, and her debut single, “Spend The Night” is now making the charts at college/indie radio stations. The album track, “This Little Love,” will be featured on an upcoming episode of “Live with Regis and Kelly,” and Bernstein has signed a deal with MTV-VH1-Logo for her music to be used on air.
A graduate of the Broadcast Music Inc. Songwriters Hall of Fame Workshop in New York City, Bernstein received the New Writer Award from the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame last year.
“I’m working hard to get my music out there,” she said. “Creative fields are hard to pursue. It’s one thing to have talent, but you need drive and to know how to network.”
She plans to continue to reach out to people she has met in the music industry and to promote her work.
A 2005 graduate of Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham, Bernstein earned a bachelor’s degree in music and English from Barnard College in New York in 2009.
While in high school, she performed at radio stations and sporting events, and at the Jazz in July summer series at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst with renowned jazz musicians Billy Taylor and Sheila Jordan.
The daughter of Sherry Himmelstein and Kenneth Bernstein, of Hampden, Bernstein said she grew up listening to blues, folk, soul and rock ‘n’ roll by such artists as Joan Baez, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Joni Mitchell and Aretha Franklin.
Her paternal grandparents were classically trained pianists, and her maternal great-great grandmother was a singer in Russia who lost her voice and immigrated to the U.S. to seek medical treatment.
“I’ve always been singing,” Bernstein said. “I’ve always had this fire inside of me to do that.”
Asked where she would like to be in 10 years, Bernstein said her music will be constantly developing, and that is exciting to her.
She’d like to be able to fill a stadium with people who want to hear her sing, and she would like her listeners to say, “Wow. That’s an emotion I’ve felt.”