Front & Center: Sierra Hull's New Album's Out
By TheImproper.com

Music Phenom Ready for Break Out 
New Album Showcases 16-Year-Old's Virtuosity on Mandolin

For the moment, Sierra Hull is known mostly in the small world of blue grass music. But today her first album is being released. Now it's only a matter of time before she skyrockets into a major star. And, she’s only 16! But don’t let her age fool you. Hull is an amazing music phenom. Her skills on the guitar and mandolin are almost beyond comparison. Plus she has the looks and voice of an angel. She blows away Miley Cyrus. Country star Alison Krauss has taken her under her wing, and Hull’s record, Secrets, (Rounder) is astonishing. 

Hull began playing the mandolin at age 8, and quickly became noted on the blue grass festival scene for her fluid, inventive picking – winning several mandolin and guitar championships in the process, according to her official biography. Beyond her instrumental skills, Hull has developed into an exquisite vocalist since first starting to sing publicly two years ago. Working closely with co-producer Ron Block (Alison Krauss and Union Station), Hull’s vocals on the album are disarmingly tender and eloquent, yet delivered with the confidence and honesty necessary to cut through a top-notch bluegrass ensemble. Among the musicians and vocalists joining her on Secrets are Block, Barry Bales, Dennis Crouch, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Clay Hess, Rob Ickes, Chris Jones, Jason Moore, Tony Rice, Dan Tyminski, Jim VanCleve, and the remarkably hard-driving seventeen-year-old banjo phenom Cory Walker, who has already played alongside Sierra for several years.

Her title track includes a furious mandolin run and her driving vocals. All four members of Union Station — Tyminski on vocals, Block on guitar and vocals, Bales on bass and Douglas on dobro, support her. Hull's mandolin skills are on display on "Smashville" by Jim VanCleve, who plays fiddle on the track, and Hull's "Hullarious. Teen phenom Walker who also plays in Hull's band Highway 111, accompanies her on banjo.

Though she self-released an instrumental CD, Angel Mountain, in 2002, when she was just 10, Secrets is a far more mature professionally and emotinally. “What I’ve seen in Sierra over the months of working on Secrets is a passion for music in general – and specifically for bluegrass,” says co-producer Block. “She has an intense desire for excellence, a love of good songs, and an attention to detail that is not often found in someone so young…she’s only going to get better and better as time goes on. It’ll be intriguing to watch how her vision and creativity affect the future of bluegrass in the coming years.”