According to Val Renner, programming director of the Akron Civic Theatre, the Angie Haze Project is the “epitome of one of the success stories” for the theater. One of the Akron Civic’s aims under its Knight Arts grant is to bring in and promote local talent. Last year, when the Angie Haze Project appeared in the cabaret-style Club on the theater’s main stage, the place was sold out. Everyone loved her music, Renner said, and so the singer has been invited back to do it again on April 17.

Angie Haze likes the atmosphere as well. During a telephone interview, the 33-year old singer said she enjoys the “laid back, more intimate setting.” It allows her to focus on the incredible range of musical interests that she’s known for.

Angie Haze Project. Photo courtesy of Akron Civic Theatre

According to Haze, she has a kind of gypsy in her musical soul, but with a special meaning. Musically, her background includes classical composers when she was learning the piano at a young age. Added to that were the Italian songs she learned from her family. As a young woman, she fell in love with movie music and musical theater. And then she drifted toward the musical stylings of certain folk/rock singers like Joni Mitchell.

Along the way, Haze learned to play a range of musical instruments – as well as developing a fondness for exotic musical instruments and influences. As she noted, gypsies wandered from place to place, picking up certain values from the cultures they lived in or visited. It was the same for her musically – taking what she appreciated from her experience and applying it to her own music.

The performance at the Civic is a case in point. Haze commented that she will be standing in front of a “pretty complete” drum set. At hand for her to use will be a keyboard, guitar and melodica, along with a cello/banjo (which is an instrument tuned like a guitar but with a “warmer tone” that you associate with a cello). Joining her, the singer said, will be six musicians, one of whom will be playing a hurdy-gurdy (now that’s something you don’t see all the time). The other instrumentalists will be playing a sax, drum, upright bass, cello and one person who will playing guitar, mandolin and flute.

All the songs that the audience will hear are Haze’s. As she noted, she has been writing songs and lyrics since she was around 10 years old and sitting at the piano. Since then she has completed music for three albums. Unfortunately none of them has been released (because of bad musical management and other behind-the-scenes problems). Haze noted that she has never recorded any of those songs as a result of those experiences, although she will perform some in live performances. She is at work on another unnamed album, and has, as she added, a great management team that makes her feel she is “in the right hands.”

Hopefully Haze will perform what she said she considers as her favorite or signature work, a song called “We Will Lead.” It contains a message that speaks strongly and intimately to her, for it says a lot about who she is as an artist and an individual. Many songs, Haze commented, exalt the “excessive,” whether partying or something else. In her music, she aims to become vulnerable, just feeling and stripping away any desire for “excessiveness.” For her, she uses “music as a tool,” she said, to express her hope to get the most out of life.

Haze’s aim fits into the name of the Angie Haze Project. As she put it, she – and her music – are a work in progress. She originally performed as Angie Haze and did mostly solo work. Nine years ago she picked up the word “Project” when she wanted to be more flexible about the amount of instruments she needed to reflect her “gypsy” call in music. As she commented, the Akron area has some incredible musicians. As she develops themes for her live performances (like some Near East influences that inform the set she creates), she searches out talent to appear with her. Sometimes she knows exactly the “part” she wants them to play and exactly how she needs it to sound; at others, the musicians just “jam a lot.”

The Angie Haze Project will appear at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 17 on the main stage of the Akron Civic Theatre, 182 S. Main St., Akron; 330-253-2488; www.akroncivic.com. Tickets are $15 ($25 for couples).