After one year of sitting silently through the pandemic, like most creators, I could no longer see my future clearly and I struggled to find inspiration. As a musician, inspiration is everything. I sat most days on the 2x4 ft. balcony of my East Hollywood apartment, looking out to the trees and the birds, wondering how it was possible that time seemed to be passing so slowly and so quickly all at once. I remember the stillness in the streets and how eerie that was. I grew up in Pennsylvania, where we have all four beautiful seasons to indicate the passing of time and keep us perpetually inspired and entertained. Here in Los Angeles, every day is the same as the last, and I was always just too busy to realize how empty that can feel. For the first time as a creator, I didn’t know what to sing or what to write. I just knew that I needed some air, and to fill up on the endless supply of life force we call music.

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So I dusted off my sheet music and began to explore classical vocal repertoire again for the first time since college, but this time something was different. I had a deeper appreciation for music than I ever did before, and I brought to my interpretation a long, winding journey of artistic discovery and years of performance experience in a multitude of genres. My voice soared openly and freely on the melodies of my past, but I no longer sounded like an opera singer. When I graduated, most of my classmates did become opera singers and Broadway performers, but I decided to join a rock band and I have been paving my own path ever since. I realized that I finally sounded like me. After brushing up on vocal literature, new and old, I collected all of my favorite songs that I enjoy singing, classical and otherwise, and recorded them one by one. I organized them by seasonal feeling, sound and/or lyrical concept, in appreciation of the deep and profound effect that the changing of the seasons has on every part of us, including the music we listen to and how it makes us feel throughout the year as time passes by. And so, it has become my artistic mission to create a soundtrack of inspirational vocal repertoire for one entire year of your beautiful life on earth.

— Laura Auer