REFERENCES

Super Stolie has always had the music in her! A solid combination of her artistic singing father and extroverted dancing mother, she was drawn to melody and rhythm from a very young age. Piano and ballet, drawing and creative writing, choirs and sports, theater and guitar — her experiences and interests always directed her to a career in the arts.

 

College in Central Illinois trained her as a music educator, but the spotlight was always calling. Stolie embraced any opportunity on-campus and during a study abroad in London, England, to perform her original songs. She formed a band, hunted for gigs, designed the flyers to promote, and wrote the HTML code for her own website, www.stolie.com, in 1998.

 

Post-college led Stolie to the big city of Chicago where she continued her education in the music business. She was hired after an internship at Bloodshot Records, an independent record label, where she worked college radio promotions, public relations, promotional design, and launched the company’s MySpace page at the birth of social media. While building her professional know-how, Stolie continued her artistry, performing constantly, recording in various studios, touring the US college circuit, hosting open mics in Chicago, engineering the soundboard, running her own PR campaigns, and releasing over a dozen albums, both solo efforts and various group projects.

 

In 2006, to shift away from playing nighttime gigs 5-6 times a week, Stolie began exploring the family market. She was invited to perform a series of shows for Millennium Park’s Family Fun Festival and landed a weekly show at Fantasy Kingdom, Chicago’s first indoor play place for children. The exposure opened the door to countless birthday parties and street festivals, and it wasn’t long before her band was invited to play at the Taste of Chicago and Navy Pier.

 

Super Stolie’s shows boast a high level of interactivity for children of all ages and capacities. Intertwining nursery rhymes for the little ones with movement activities for the energetic ones, volunteer opportunities for the big kids and parent+child modifications for the shy ones.  

 

Her latest attraction, Super Stolie ¡Guacamole!, is a Spanish-English bilingual performance that encourages language learning and embraces Hispanic culture. After honors Spanish in high school, Stolie revived her Spanish learning in 2015 through an immersion program in Guadalajara, México. She then visited Pacific coastal town, Puerto Vallarta, where she now spends the winter months — practicing Spanish, playing music for tourists, booking her summer shows and avoiding the cold!

 

2017 celebrated 10 years of music-making for children and was celebrated with a 10-year anniversary CD of dance remixes of 10 previously released songs (see tracks on the left). 

 

2019 saw the release Hola Ola, a bilingual album featuring three original fully bilingual Spanish-English songs, plus a track from the movie, Coco. 

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In March 2020, Stolie found herself pregnant just 10 days before quarantine started! She is spending the summer cooking a kid and filming virtual music programs for her clients as well as airing live shows via Facebook and Zoom. 

 

Super Stolie is always finding new ways to reinvent her music programs and share her love of life with the little ones who listen. She can't wait to start the music and language-learning journey with her own daughter who is scheduled to arrive in November 2020!