Band members celebrate unshakeable Resilience
There is always a way home. That’s the last line of Sonique Sanctuary’s song Resilience available on their debut album by the same name. Their album, Resilience, will be released at a special launch party on Friday in the City of Hamilton. The band which plays primarily progressive rock is comprised of Nick Wadson, Oliver (Ace) Cepeda and Dr Traceylynne Harney. “The album is entitled Resilience, because we have all been through some bad times in this last chunk of our lives,” said Dr Harney. “We have had some huge challenges. All of us have experienced death in the family. I lost both of my parents. I had a severely abusive childhood, estrangements in my immediate family and all kinds of intense stuff.”
She said when she entered her 40s she found a lot of stuff she hadn’t been dealing with coming to the surface. “If you are entering this age range and don’t have a creative outlet, you should find one fast,” she said. She said many of the songs have a dark tone to them, but Resilience is their happy song. “It is all really authentic,” she said.
Nick Wadson runs the Bermuda Drum Institute by the bus terminal in Hamilton. Mr Cepeda teaches guitar at the Bermuda Guitar Institute which is an offshoot of the Bermuda Drum Institute. Dr Harney is an educator, but studied music from six years old doing cello, piano and voice and opera singing. “I wanted to go into that,” she said, “but I didn’t have the kind of support these guys had from their parents. I was more geared towards medicine and I became a physician. That wasn’t my nature, it was forced. It was natural for me to come back to music, because that is my nature to be an entertainer.”
Mr Wadson said one of the problems they had faced as a band was that there wasn’t a big appetite for progressive rock in Bermuda. “Sonique Sanctuary has a lot of musical elements but is mostly centred towards rock music,” said Mr Wadson. “It is not dance music.” Dr Harney said she liked to call it “conscious rock” because it is authentic. “It is deep and dark and about real human experiences,” she said.
Mr Wadson and Mr Cepeda started the band in 2011 as an instrumental band to display high-level musical technical proficiency. “That has a very small niche here,” he said. “It is a bit like ‘musician’s music’. Singer Joy Barnum recommended Traceylynne to us. From there we expanded our repertoire hugely and that gives us a bit more appeal.”
Mr Wadson said he started taking drumming seriously at 15 years old while living in Florida. “The family put up with it and supported it, sometimes grudgingly,” he said. “We used to practice in the bottom floor of the house. Drumming was probably the last thing my father wanted to hear at the end of the work day, but maybe he saw that it eventually would take off.”
Mr Cepeda said he picked up the guitar at the age of seven while living in the Philippines but didn’t get into it seriously until he reached his teen years. “At some point I decided to go to guitar school,” he said. “I wanted to be able to play the guitar. I ended up replacing my guitar teacher at the Yamaha School of Music in the Philippines. I have had multiple bands and stuff and never stopped since then. At the same time I also kept on teaching guitar.”
Sonique Sanctuary is already planning their second album which they hope will be longer than Resilience with 12 tracks.
The release party will be at Taste at 141 Front Street on Friday at 8pm. It will include a show, raffle prizes and some spoken word.
For more information about Sonique Sanctuary see their Facebook page at
Sonique Sanctuary joins Will Black at Hog Penny
July 5, 2014 was the day Sonique Sanctuary joins Will Black at Hog Penny to Rock the Night away. Also joining the band is Awesome Bass player Dave Talkovic who flew all the way from Florida to join the Band.
