Fresh from recording her second album in Toronto and with an ECMA showcase coming up in Fredericton, singer-songwriter Stephanie Mainville is off to a running start this year.

The Darlings Island mother of four says the recording process at Canterbury Studios in Toronto was new to her.

Working with producer Kevin Fox and other top-notch musicians was a wonderful experience, she says.

"The musicians are just so focussed on their own performance that I was able to just kind of be - in a positive way - not the focus." The new CD, described as a reflective acoustic pop album, explores life in a personal way and will likely bring Mainville's music to a wider audience. She stops short of calling it a departure from her debut faithbased CD, Family, released in 2004.

"Musically, it is somewhat more acoustic driven. You're not going to hear fiddle, you're not going to hear a Celtic sound,"she says."As far as the content, the first one was very much faith-based and for that community.

This one - there's faith intertwined there in the music and the lyrics - it's just communicated in such a way that it's just telling stories of life." You can catch Mainville next week at the ECMAs in Fredericton. She performs Feb. 8 at the Music New Brunswick ECMA Showcase at The Marquee at 9:40 p.m. Then on Feb. 10, you can see her live at the ECMA Musicstop Discovery Stage at Sweetwaters at 10:30 a.m. For details on Mainville, visit www.stephaniemainville.com.

STEPHANIE MAINVILLE’S TOP LISTENING PICKS

1. Get Me Through December - Allison Krauss Lyrics by Gordie Sampson, vocals by Allison Krauss, on Natalie McMaster's In My Hands CD and based on a Neil Gow lament. It doesn't get any better than that.

2. Meditation from Thais One of the world's great encore pieces, Meditation from the opera Thais was written by Jules Massenet in 1893. I performed it a little less than 100 years later in the New Brunswick Music Festival while in high school. It was by far my best showing at the festival. I think I became a real violinist that day.

3. Life is a Highway - Tom Cochrane The best Canadian cruising song ever written. I especially like chiming in with the ladies on the backing vocals. When this tune comes on the radio one shouldn't worry about how they look to passing motorists.

4. Into the West - Annie Lennox Written and performed by Annie Lennox for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Beautifully performed and orchestrated, this is a very powerful song and one that I want sung and danced to by my dear friend Shiloh, when I come to my journey's end.

5. Barber's Adagio for Strings, op. 11 Samuel Barber proves that some of the greatest musical ideas are quite simple and can evoke the deepest sentiments. I was 15 when I performed this while playing first violin with the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra.

6. Ode to the Kingston Peninsula - Carolyn Murray Written by my mother in 1984 in celebration of New Brunswick's bicentennial. This piece makes me proud of her and grateful that my parents raised me in one of the most beautiful places on earth - in a community of truly caring people.

7. Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen k.d. lang's live performance of this during the Juno awards in Winnipeg 2005 is breathtaking. The audience is with her all the way. Check it out on You Tube. Her interpretation and talent is pure liquid gold.

8. Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes Peter Gabriel is a great artist and Youssou N'Dour takes this song over the top. The So album proved to me that the '80s wasn't a total wasteland musically. This album was co-produced by Daniel Lanois. Gotta love the Canadian connection.

9. U2 - Bad As a major U2 fan, I will always remember going to North Carolina to see them in concert with my husband. I heard Bad for the first time on a Sony Walkman that I saved up my money to buy. I stuck in the Unforgettable Fire on cassette and soaked in every tambourine hit, every note and every word.

10. Whenever God Shines His Light - Van Morrison This duet with Cliff Richard is one of the happiest, hope-filled songs out there. It contains all the good news anyone needs to know.