These first few installments of my "Musings" page are to give a more in-depth and personal account of how I came to do what I do the way I do it. So, to pick up my story where I left off:

I went to London to study acting full-time in a two-year professional training program at The Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. They had auditioned hundreds of Americans and accepted only two, so I arrived with a swollen head and the vague idea that I was God's gift to the theatre. Seventeen year-olds may think they are pretty mature and hip... but adults can pretty much size them up in a glance or two. They had my number and made a point of cutting me down to size. Unfortunately they did too good a job and managed to kill my enthusiasm for the theatre at the same time. I quit just short of finishing and bought an old VW Kombi van and set out with my boyfriend for points unknown. We first headed for southern Portugal with visions of red wine, full moons, sand and sea and love and music dancing in our heads. But although we drove to the southernmost tip of Portugal, a place called Faro, it was still too cold to live on the beach. So we loaded our van onto a ferry and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into Tangier. We kept driving south until it got warm enough to stop. That turned out to be the coast of southern Morocco near Agadir. We lived on the beach for about three months before moving up into the Atlas Mountains and living there outside of Marrakech for another three months.

We both played guitar, sang and wrote our own songs. By this time we had enough songs together that we decided to head back up to Spain and start playing in the streets. Which we did. However, Franco was still in power and very unfriendly to foreign youth, especially those with long hair and beads singing on the streets and so we were promptly arrested our second day there and put in jail in Malaga. Not fun. We were only held for a day (although it felt like a week), and since we continued to be hassled by the Guardia Civil everywhere we went, we cut short our time in Spain and drove to Paris. After some lovely time there we went to Switzerland and down into Italy where we once again put our van on a ferry and crossed over to Greece. We left our van in Athens and went to live in a cave on the island of Ios for a while. After nearly a year of traveling I was wanting to get down to some work. My friend went to live in a kibbutz in Israel and I flew back to NYC to start looking for acting work.

I was soon doing a lot of off-off-Broadway shows. Then as fate would have it, the trumpet player who had introduced me to jazz several years before, saw my picture in the paper and got back in touch with me. He was studying with Lennie Tristano and I was looking for someone to study singing with. I had again cooled on the idea of pursuing an acting career and was wanting to sing more. I went along with him to one of his lessons and met Lennie. I began to study with Lennie and he started me singing along with Billie Holiday and Diana Ross. (Yes, that's right, Diana Ross). I had been studying with Lennie for about a year before I began to realize his historical importance and contributions to jazz. I was suddenly very intimidated by who he was. When I went into my next lesson I was upset and said something to the effect that I didn't understand how he could waste his valuable time on such a rank beginner as myself. I will never forget his response. He took his time and then said, "I look at it this way, you and I are both doing the same thing. I've just been doing it a helluva lot longer so I can help to guide you." That made sense to me. I felt reassured and continued to study with him for four years.

During that time I established my foundation in the jazz idiom by learning hundreds of songs and singing along with solos by Lester Young, Fats Navarro, Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown and many more. I did all my work with Lennie by ear, which I think is the best way to learn. I think of music as a language and just as we learn to speak as children by imitating what we hear, so it is the same with music. And later on, just as we become literate and learn to read and write our language, so later on I learned how to read and write music. But first I learned to "speak" it by intensive listening and imitation.

Last night I was watching a video of Joseph Campbell talking about following your bliss, and Bill Moyers asked him: "Do you ever have this sense when you are following your bliss, of being helped by hidden hands?" And Joseph Campbell emphatically replied, "All the time. It is miraculous. If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. You begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you."

As I am describing some of the key events in my life and the people I have met along the way, I begin to recognize these "helping hands" that Joseph Campbell was talking about, and all the beautiful people who are in the field of my bliss... jazz.

So until next time, remember: Follow your bliss.

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is: "How did you become a jazz singer?" And on the heels of that question comes: "Did you always know you wanted to be a singer?"

I never intended to be a singer. And yet the people I have met, the circumstances of my life and the leanings of my own heart have led me here. Here, where I find myself a singer. A jazz singer. How did it happen?

My big sister Penny had one of those little portable record players that only played 45s. It was the beginning of the reign of rock n' roll in the mid-50's. I thought she was so cool and I wanted to be grown-up just like her. I thought anything on a 45 was rock n' roll, so I'd play the records of hers that I liked and sing along. I still remember the songs: Ebb Tide, Chicago, Haji Baba and To The Ends of the Earth... all sung by Frank Sinatra (not Elvis). When exploring my parents' record collection in our long blue living room I was likewise drawn to sing along with singers singing standards. More Frank, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams and several Broadway musical scores.

But what I lovingly call my "jazz epiphany" came when I was thirteen. There in the same blue living room, an older friend of mine who played trumpet came by with "The Sidewinder" by Lee Morgan. He put it on. We listened. Then my friend took out his horn, closed his eyes and began to play along with the record. He was gone. And I wanted to be gone too. I had never heard music like that before. In the small town where I grew up on Long Island I had never seen anyone get into anything the way he did when he played. The fierce concentration, the commitment to the moment. I stood up and began to dance. On that same blue carpet where I had danced to Peter and the Wolf, West Side Story, Damn Yankees and everything else. But this was different. This was an epiphany.

An epiphany is defined as a moment of sudden intuitive understanding; a flash of insight, a scene, experience, that occasions such moment. The experience was hearing jazz for the first time, and the sudden intuitive understanding was that somehow jazz would be my life's work.

I thought I would be an improvising dancer. I adored Isadora Duncan, I revered the courage of Martha Graham and I got myself into a dance and drama camp high in the Rockies near Steamboat Springs that same summer. I was dancing all day, every day. Studying. Inspired by my vision of interpreting instrumental jazz solos while they were being played. Wearing my black leotards and catching each nuance on the fly. Reflecting it, expressing it with my entire body.

I spent two summers there. One day after lunch, lounging in the sun, of my girlfriends said, "Why don't you go and audition for the drama department's play?" I had some free time right then so on an impulse I went down to the theater at her suggestion. To my amazement I was cast in the leading role. I was suddenly confronted with a new challenge: Acting. The idea was not totally unfamiliar to me. My mother had worked in summer stock and I had tagged along to watch rehearsals and do little walk-on parts when no babysitter could be found. I liked the smell of the theater. Still do.

The acting teacher was a man who loved the theater, loved to teach and gave me great encouragement and confidence in my talent. I transferred to being a drama major and also did musicals. A bit of song trivia: As the character Susie in "Babes in Arms" by Rodgers & Hart, one of my big numbers was "My Funny Valentine". It is sung by Susie about the boy she is pining for whose name is Valentine.

It now seemed to me that I was destined for a life in the theater. I did pursue a theatrical path for several years. I graduated from a performing arts high school called Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. I spent the summer after graduation as an apprentice at The Westport Country Playhouse. From there I went directly to a two-year professional training program at The Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Next time in Musings I'll be talking about how my dance and drama training has affected my work as a singer and how I came full circle back to jazz ... and jazz singing.

Until then, here's a parting thought:

"A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within." - Eudora Welty

After Lennie Tristano died in 1978 I began to study with Warne Marsh, the great (and underrated) tenor saxophonist who studied and played with Tristano for many years. By this time I had established enough of a foundation and musical vocabulary through my work with Lennie that I was ready to begin to take my baby steps as an improviser myself. With Warne I began to scat and improvise on my own.

However, my period of "formal" study was about to evolve into "on-the-job" training. While waiting one afternoon for the oh so slow elevator at the Hotel Bretton-Hall (a well-known musician's residence in NYC), I had the great good fortune to meet Manny Duran. Manny was an experienced and seasoned trumpet player who believed in my potential enough to start a band with me. I was ready to start playing in a band, but without his encouragement and confidence in me, I have no idea when I would have found the courage to do it. He and I began to perform together in 1980. Manny was a veteran in the jazz and latin jazz world, having played with Machito, Mongo Santamaria, Ray Barretto and countless others. He was quite a bit older than I was and he became my mentor. He gave me an invaluable education by sharing his insights and knowledge garnered from years and years of experience on the bandstand.

I had done quite a lot of acting in theatrical productions, so I was comfortable with the idea of walking out on stage and performing. Although acting and singing are both performing arts and share a lot of common ground, there are some key differences that make singing jazz a totally unique experience.

For example the idea of "being in the moment". This is one of the ideals that we as jazz musicians strive for in our performance. To respond intuitively and instantly to our own inner impulses in addition to the music our fellow musicians are playing. Any real actor will tell you that they are striving for that same thing…to be fully present in the moment and responding spontaneously to what is happening on the stage right then. To be able to do that an actor must take the truth of the moment and filter it through all the "homework" he has done about who his character is and what makes him tick. The actor then has the responsibility of having to say certain words at a certain time so that the other actors can pick up their cues and say their lines and move the play forward. The actor is not free to elaborate on his script. He must stay within the limitation of the written dialogue.

As jazz artists we take the truth of the moment and filter it through all the "homework" we have done on the lyrics, melody, and harmony… but then we are in the unique position of being free to play whatever musical ideas come into our heart and mind. Yes, we have the responsibility to keep the form of the tune, but within that limitation we are free to make up the "dialogue" with our band as we go. We can continue to play and elaborate as long as we feel we have something worthwhile to say. Our freedom to create music "in the moment" is not only totally exhilarating but also entirely unique in the world of the performing arts.

For the five years that Manny Duran and I had a working band together, I primarily focused on using my voice in a purely instrumental way, i.e. scat singing. One of the standout features of our band was that Manny and I played solos in unison that we had memorized by such great musicians as Fats Navarro, Lester Young and Charlie Parker. One of these solos can be heard on my first and our only recording together on the Stash record label called "Andruline". It's a Fats Navarro solo over the changes of "What is This Thing Called Love" and is titled "Fats Flats". Such a great solo! And what fun to sing it in unison with a real live trumpet! What we basically had was a be-bop band with my voice functioning as a front-line "horn" alongside Manny's trumpet. In addition to recreating solos, we did originals by Manny, our pianist Peter Madsen and some standards. These are also represented on our album "Andruline".

In 1985, I was at the Blue Note one night to hear Joe Williams sing. The last number of his first set was "Everything Must Change". And after he finished singing, everything did change for me. For those of you who are not familiar with the lyric of that song, let me fill you in. The song is about how the young become the old, winter turns to spring, a wounded heart will heal, and other examples of how everything must change. But the song goes on to say that there are a few things that do not change. Such as rain comes from the clouds, sun lights up the sky AND (this phrase is the very last line of the song, and it's the only time it appears in the lyric, it's the punchline so to speak), "Music makes me cry". And that is exactly what was happening to me. The music was making the tears roll down my face and all at once I realized that it wasn't only the music that had moved me, but it was the meaning of the words… the lyric. And that's when everything changed for me.

During the years I spent playing with Manny and studying with Warne I was obsessed with scat singing. But that night listening to Joe Williams sing, I realized that I was the only one on my bandstand with the power of WORDS. And I hadn't been using that power. I was missing out on a vast, rich, deep dimension of expression. Everything must change, so in July of 1985 Manny and I disbanded our group and I went out on my own as a solo artist…as a singer of songs who also loves to scat. And that is the path I am still following.

There is a beautiful quote from the artist and sculptor Auguste Rodin, which articulates what the artistic process is, in as few words as I have ever heard it. It goes like this:

"Where shall we begin? There is no beginning. Start where you arrive. Stop before what entices you. And work! You will enter little by little into the entirety. Method will be born in proportion to your interest; elements which your attention at first separates in order to analyze them, will unite to compose the whole. In the calm exile of work, we first learn patience, which in turn teaches energy, and energy give us eternal youth made of self-collectedness and enthusiasm."

In my next musings I want to talk about some of the "elements" of singing, and the connection between the skills of an actor and the skills of a singer. So until then I urge you to patiently enter the calm exile of work, collect yourself and enthuse. Dig?