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MALEA McGUINNESS’ remarkable story is told through her music, with a world-class voice that has been heard on Broadway and in operas, and now the singer-songwriter brings the songs on her new album CLOSE AS AIR to life. Throughout, her warm, sensual vocals take flight in an array of tunes reflecting her pop, rock and country influences.

An exotic beauty who describes herself as a “mutt,” the daughter of an Irish Green Beret father and a Korean mother she barely got to know, MALEA giggles infectiously, “I used to always say, the Irish side of me likes to drink, and the Korean side really can’t handle it.”

Born in Fort Hood, TX, MALEA spent two years in Seoul, Korea, then, at five, she and her younger sister were sent to live with her father’s father and stepmother on Long Island, where they were strictly restricted in their access to pop culture, such as rock music, TV and movies.

“I always loved to sing, but my grandparents kept telling me to be quiet,” she laughs. “When I was young, I always used to perform in front of the mirror, but I never dreamt of doing this for a living. I wanted to be a school teacher.”

After attending prestigious music programs at Tanglewood, Oberlin Conservatory and the Chautauqua Institution, MALEA went on to pursue singing opera at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music, then landed a featured role in the Broadway revival of The King and I. But there was something missing.

“I was burned out--and I wanted to express myself more than singing opera allowed me to,” she says about the career shift. “It was just time to make a change into more contemporary music.”

MALEA made enough money doing commercial work that she was able to head to L.A. to reinvent herself as a singer-songwriter, teaching herself to play guitar and making a name on the local club circuit, performing at the Viper Room, The Roxy, The Mint and the Knitting Factory. She recorded her debut album TRUE BELIEVER with producer Scott Hackwith (Pete Townshend, Iggy Pop, The Ramones), which she released independently in 2007. The first single, “Deeper,” hit 16 on influential radio tip sheet Friday Morning Quarterback’s AC40 chart, while the follow-up (and first video) “Sweet Light” was Most Added, climbing to 3, with both in rotation on Sirius XM Satellite and Triple A stations across the country. She performed before 7,000 fans at the Summerfest Music Festival in Milwaukee, sharing the bill with B.B. King, Bon Jovi and John Mayer, then opened for Todd Rundgren at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. She also just signed an endorsement deal for her own signature model acoustic and electric guitars with Korea-based Peerless Guitars.

Her intimate vocals, with a slight hint of country twang, recall some of MALEA’s own favorites, from roots Americana performers Linda Ronstadt, Crystal Gayle, Emmylou Harris, Stevie Nicks, Sheryl Crow and Eva Cassidy to more R&B-flavored singers like Roberta Flack, Laura Nyro and Elton John.

The songs on CLOSE AS AIR, such as the title track--which pays tribute to one of her close friends and personal musical mentors--represent a longing for closeness and the kind of extended family MALEA feels she missed out on as a child, a community that has formed on the Internet, where her music has been discovered by 30,000 fans on MySpace alone.

“It’s about having faith in something you can’t necessarily see or touch,” she says, “a higher calling, a higher being… Which is ironic because the first song I started to write when I came out to L.A. was ‘Close As Air.’ I never realized who it was about until I finished.”

You can hear that aching loneliness and isolation on “Stars,” where she sings: “There’s a wild and lonely child in the airport/Standing there with tears in her eyes,” admitting, “That was me at five, waiting to be picked up my grandparents.”

The current single “Moving On” tells of returning home a different person than the one that left (“If you love me/Then you love me/And if not/OK…I’m moving on”), inspired by the trip to attend her grandfather’s funeral.

Two other stylistic directions are represented by the country-flavored “Birthday” and the orchestral soul of “Tonight,” which celebrate finally finding her one true love after the bittersweet romantic misfires of “Memories,” about her time as a struggling performer in New York City (“You were mine/For a time/And I knew you/For awhile”), and “No More,” where she gets rid of a troublesome ex (“Crazy doesn’t work with me no more”). “Falling” and “Time Will Show” are about being able to count on your friends for support in times of crisis, while her cover of the standard “Water Is Wide,” an Appalachian mountain song that could have come straight off the T Bone Burnett-produced O Brother Where Art Thou?, demonstrates her love for what she calls “real country music”: “Give me a boat/That can carry two/And both shall row/My love and I.”

CLOSE AS AIR comes straight from the heart that MALEA McGUINNESS wears on her sleeve for all to see, hear and, hopefully, embrace.

“I love my music and have faith in it,” she says. “I just feel it will reach who it’s supposed to reach. But I’m certainly going to perform these songs live and give them every chance of being heard.”

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