Roslyn native Sheri Miller's musical apprenticeship has culminated in the production of a new EP, "Mantra," which will be released on Monday, Feb. 25.

On that date, there will be a release show party in Manhattan. The party will take place at The Living Room, 154 Ludlow St. at 8 p.m. with a full band with strings as entertainment. Ms. Miller will be playing at that party and at a West Coast event as well. On Thursday, March 6, there will be a release party at The Hotel Café, 1623 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Los Angeles, CA.

Born in a musical household in Roslyn, Sheri Miller grew up listening to her mother, an opera singer belt out beautiful arias in the night, while playing classical Debussy piano. Ms. Miller's uncle, an accomplished recording engineer in Los Angeles, educated Sheri with his handmade mix tapes of Pink Floyd, Hungarian Gypsy Music, Diamanda Galas and Etta James.

Ms. Miller began playing the piano at an early age, but rebelled by composing her own wild and fantastical original songs. "I remember playing this one song I had made up on the piano, The Lost Tribe, about buffalo, sunsets and gypsy wandering so many times, my mother almost killed me."

While at the University of Pennsylvania studying literature and poetry, Sheri began to sing with a local Philly blues band, while secretly sculpting her own songs, tucked away in her tiny bedroom. But one Sunday afternoon, something magical appeared to Ms. Miller, completely changing her life.

"I had been writing songs in my room for months, which was a 20-minute walk from the Penn jazz music room, which had all the practice pianos, " she said. "And I knew I was definitely not writing much each day, because it was such a big hassle to walk those long blocks downtown. Over the next couple of months, I started dreaming steadily at night about keyboards, about buying a used keyboard. I clearly remember one Saturday night in particular, I had an extremely vivid dream about this small black, white and gray Casio keyboard. The next morning I woke up with the image of the keyboard still clear in my mind and took a different, more scenic route that day, through an underpass of green trees. So I'm walking and there's this one-day church sale, where they had the exact Casio keyboard I had dreamed of the night before. I quickly ran to the ATM, bought the keyboard for $20 and started seriously writing my songs on that sweet, broken keyboard Casio from that day on. Since then, I believe coincidences are just visible lines in our destiny."

After college, Ms. Miller moved back to New York to Park Slope, Brooklyn and made steady rounds at local open mics like The Raven, while practicing her acoustic guitar and keyboard for hours in her basement apartment. She immersed herself in the poetry of Charles Bukowski, O. Henry, Marcel Proust, Margaret Atwood and Maya Angelou. She melted into Ella Fitzgerald, The Beatles, classical music, Etta James, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding and Billie Holiday.

Ms. Miller soon developed her own soundscape of hypnotic bluesy American soul meets classic British melodic-pop, bringing it to the stages of The Bowery Ballroom, Joe's Pub, World Café Live, The Bluebird Café, The Canal Room and The Living Room. She had a song featured on the Songwriter' Hall of Fame Compilation, Volume 4 and has won the "Pop" Category in the Songdoor Songwriting contest, out of thousands of entries.

"I feel extremely lucky to be able to create music," Ms. Miller adds. "I only hope to keep being a more honest, genuine, deep and authentic artist and songwriter, so that people can glimpse a spark of truth in my songs."

Ms. Miller's EP has received advance praise both here and abroad. Mark Fogarty of brokeruniverse.com calls the EP, "Riveting" and "daring" and Ms. Miller a "young, talented performer."

Street Voice, a music magazine from The United Kingdom adds: "So much talent...I'm surprised no label has picked up on her sound."