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Biography Highlights

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Darlene Koldenhoven is a GRAMMY® Award Winner with 3 GRAMMY® nominations and is the first inductee into the Indie Music Hall of Fame. Darlene is known worldwide as the featured soprano soloist singing “Aria” in the PBS TV Special and Video, Yanni, Live at the Acropolis seen by over 1.5 billion television viewers and millions more now on YouTube. She has several #1 albums on the ZMR International Radio Charts. Darlene's current album, The Grand Piano Spa, debuted #4 on the prestigious Billboard Classical Crossover Album Charts its first week out. Her biggest-award winning albums are Color Me Home that debuted #1 and won a stunning 20 awards and 35 nominations, including Best New Age Vocal Album 2018; two piano with instrumentation albums – Chromatones that won Music of the Year 2019, Tranquil Times Best New Age Album 2012 and Heavenly Peace Best Holiday Album 2008. Other GRAMMY® winners Tom Scott, Wouter Kellerman, Ricky Kej, Charlie Bisharet, Brent Fischer and nominees David Arkenstone and Rocky Dawuni appear on her albums released on her label, TimeArt® Recordings, that are heard all over the world including SiriusXM, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube and two hundred more radio stations. Darlene’s two piano with instrumentation albums are played in treatment rooms of massage and healing practitioners and are on rotation on the CARE Channel Network in hospitals and hospices worldwide. Darlene’s voice of many genres has sung on over 1,000 recordings in film, television, albums, commercials and charitable causes internationally. She has sung on a plethora of artists’ albums including Pink Floyd, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Neil Young, Celine Dion, Rod Stewart. Before the pandemic, Darlene traveled to India three times to be a featured live performer with Grammy winner Ricky Kej before the Queen of Bangalore and thousands of fans, including a TEDx Talk in an effort to raise awareness of climate change and humanitarian causes that she holds dear. Darlene has performed also as soloist with David Byrne in Prince Albert Royal Festival Hall with London’s Royal Philharmonic; the Chicago Symphony; on the Academy Awards with the late Robin Williams, and most notably, as the tambourine-waving choir nun with Whoopi Goldberg in both Sister Act films where off-camera she was the production vocal coach, music director and rehearsal pianist during their choreography rehearsals. Even Olympic figure skating artists like Sasha Cohen perform to her music. Born and raised in Chicago, Darlene’s formal piano training that began at age 9 made the piano her closest friend. She reads music and improvises, playing many styles – Classical, New Age, Jazz, Rock, Pop, Musical Theater. Darlene accompanies herself on piano or keytar-synth in her live vocal concerts. She plays harpsichord and piano with orchestras and has accompanied other vocalists or instrumentalists on their live concert tours. Ms. Koldenhoven holds a Master’s degree in voice and Bachelors in Music Education and has authored an educational book with 7 instructional CDs titled, Tune Your Voice: Singing and Your Mind’s Musical Ear endorsed by faculty from Juilliard to American Idol, Berklee, NYU. She is a credentialed voice teacher and certified Integrated Listening Systems sonic therapist who helps people overcome dis-ease by using her therapeutic music and unique listening techniques in her private practice as well as her healing music concerts and workshops internationally. Darlene lives in Los Angeles, California with her singing rescue dog, Poochini.