Clara Lofaro

Canadian-born singer/songwriter Clara Lofaro blends pop, rock, R&B, and jazz into an eclectic style that resists easy categorization. Raised in Toronto, she began performing at twelve and quickly revealed exceptional ability on vocals and keyboards. Admission to Boston’s Berklee College of Music followed, where instructor Barry Marshall—who had previously collaborated with R&B legend LaVern Baker as well as Boston rock figures Peter Wolf and Aimee Mann—heard her work and urged her to commit the songs to tape. Marshall then produced the resulting sessions, which became Lofaro’s debut album, Night Light, released in 2002.

To issue the record she founded her own imprint, Come True Records, and began shuttling among Toronto, Boston, and New York, cultivating followings in both Canada and the United States. For her sophomore effort, Black + Blue Pearl, issued in 2005, Lofaro assumed production duties herself; the album earned spins on New York’s WLIR and numerous college stations across the Northeast, while Ithaca’s 106 VIC named her track “One True Thing” Song of the Year for 2006. That fall she and her band entered Toronto’s Indie Week competition for unsigned acts, ultimately prevailing over more than three hundred entrants and securing a distribution agreement with the Canadian division of Universal Music.