About

21 year old singer-songwriter Amber Caparas has lived an especially challenging yet equally charmed life.  Nearly half-way into her communications degree at the College of Charleston (with Distinguished and Deans List honors), Amber recently entered an indefinite scholastic sabbatical to pursue her professional music career and active service to God through a variety of worthy causes.  She currently resides in TN where she teaches Tae Bo (R),  mentors young girls at Baby Girl’s Club, and continues to perfect her craft of songwriting, instrumentation, and performing.  Amber spends most of her nights singing at various open mic nights, songwriter rounds, or out on the streets downtown Nashville.

Amber Caparas broke onto the Charleston SC music scene with a sudden burst in the summer of 2009, as she began opening for national acts at the world famous Windjammer on the Isle of Palms — a venue that is infamous for rejecting unknowns even as warm up acts. But having been recognized by several luminaries in the local music scene Amber got her big break and was invited to open for Hootie and the Blowfish co-founder Mark Bryan (yes, the tall blonde curly-haired lead guitarist). While the Blowfish still play 4 gigs per year and are planning to release more albums after Darius Rucker cements his success as a Country soloist, Bryan also plays an occasional gig with his impromptu band “The Occasional Milkshake,” but his primary efforts are currently aimed at launching the Chucktown Music Group to discover and develop the best new talent the deep south has to offer.  Mark would later get a hold of  a scratch recording Amber made of her song ‘Better This Way’ and after one listen, Mark recognized her potential as a serious songwriter.   Mark would go on to mentor and collaborate with Amber to produce her first professional recording of all original material, the six track EP titled “Better This Way,” produced by Mark Bryan with Chucktown’s Mikey Costanzo, also a long time Blowfish tech-master. Amber wrote and recorded all songs on the EP while still just 19. Today her catalogue of original songs is nearing 100 strong and growing every day. Amber characterizes her original musical style as soulful folk-rock with Spiritual roots, and she puts her own unique spin on a long list of popular hits and classic rock songs that also deliver an uplifting or challenging message.

Amber’s Prep Years

Though she accomplished nearly as much as a pre-teen as she did as a teen, during her high school years Amber accomplished so many newsworthy achievements and honors that it is difficult to believe she found the time to teach herself guitar and occasionally sing on the street corners of Charleston.  During her prep years Amber performed with the Award Winning School of the Arts choir at Carnegie Hall and St. Bart’s Cathedral in Manhattan, she received the South Carolina Theater Association’s All-Star Cast designation for her lead performance in Steve Martin’s “Wasp,“ she earned her third black belt in Tae Kwon Do, served as Managing Editor of her school newspaper, earned All-State honors in track & field and was the team’s MVP as a senior, and was a Junior Olympics State Champion hurdler, three sport varsity letterman, 2nd in her class of 300 with a 4.92 GPA, a National Scholar Athlete Award recipient, a Palmetto Fellows Scholar, an officer in the National Honor Society, an NCAA Division-1 Athletic Scholarship recipient for Track, and rounded all that out by serving as huddle leader for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the 2000+ student West Ashley High – Charleston’s largest public school. Though quite remarkable by any measure, those are simply the highlights of Amber’s God-blessed teen years, as each milestone accomplishment represents numerous notable performances, incredible personal challenges, numerous honors, and an amazing series of stories where God showed up time and time again.

Amber the Child Artist

As a youngster Amber was already a successful child actor and singer when she shined at the AMTC talent competition in Disney World and was signed by New York’s Wilhelmina Talent Agency. By the age of nine she appeared in several national TV commercials, numerous regional ads, and appeared in a recurring Saturday morning children’s television show on ABC (Cookin’ Kids), but her life was not all glitz and games. Before moving in with her father full-time at the age of 13, Amber had endured seven different school transfers, eight home moves and constant juggling to people other than her parents.  While all the disruption may have helped Amber grow into an outgoing, fast-adjusting person, it also took its toll on her grounding in Christ.  So when Amber turned nine she agreed to take a prolonged hiatus from professional performing arts and shifted her extra-curricular interests to advanced martial arts and other sports; interests that would teach her new skills and offer a chance to meet mentors and peers with more substance than style – in environments that would remain consistent for more than one year at a time. Amber now points to the discipline she learned and mentors she gained through the martial arts as the primary tools God used to rescue her from the family storms of her childhood, and she continues today as a lifelong martial artist and advocate of gospel-based martial arts. She is currently studying Tae Bo under Shelly Blanks (Billy Blanks daughter & the original Yellow Power Ranger) and became a certified Tae Bo(r) instructor herself in March 2011.

Even through her hiatus from professional youth media, Amber has consistently served as a performing artist, on-camera talent or worship singer in large-scale ministry productions and other worship arts efforts (including her widely seen interview with Stephen Baldwin when she was just 14), and she continues to serve in missions, youth retreats, and other ministry efforts as a student leader and teacher as opportunities arise. While she continues on her path toward a full time career as a singer/songwriter and occasional actor, she also hones her writing, photography, filmmaking, graphic arts, and on-camera journalism skills as an apprentice to her father Wayne at Caparas Media and as a contributor to his own efforts to share the gospel of love through music, journalism, film, and prose. Amber continues to study advanced voice, songwriting, and stage performance as well as piano and advanced guitar, including a fruitful season with Charleston’s Chris Holly. While Amber’s exceptional success as a youth leaves her humbled, Amber takes great pride in Christ that – through it all – her purity is real, her story continues, and her vision in God grows clearer every day.

Other Interesting Tidbits

Amber was an American Idol Season 9 Golden Ticket recipient

Click here to view a 2008 feature story about Amber in the newspaper “West Of”

Amber is also an apprentice Photographer for Caparas Media:

Check out Amber’s modeling portfolio: