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If you'd told me as a little girl that I would be an opera singer when I grew up, I would probably have put bugs down your shirt. Opera singers were fat and sang weird!
Actually, if you'd told me I'd be any kind of singer, no one would've believed you. Although I excelled at my required music classes, I wasn't really interested. I quit piano at age 7 and steadfastly refused to join the numerous choirs proposed to me by my parents.
Soundtrack: the Monkees, Foreigner, and whatever was playing at the Roller Rink. |
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On my first day of Junior High, the music teacher did a range test on everyone in the class to determine whether to assign them to sing soprano or alto parts in class. We had to go into his office one-by-one and vocalize, hoping that our classmates wouldn't be listening through the door. He told me I was a soprano, that I had a great voice and he really wanted me to join the school chorus.
While I had no intention of joining lame-o boring chorus, I didn't mind receiving the compliment, and I just couldn't help bragging about it to Mom, while emphasizing my disdain for the suggestion of actually joining the choir. Before you know it, secret phone calls are made, and I am being driven to school early twice a week against my will.
I protest by lip-synching the entire year.
Soundtrack: the dance music and hip-hop they played on B96. |
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So everyone, myself included, was shocked when I decided out of the blue that I was going to be a singer. I honestly have no idea where the idea came from. Sometime when I was 13 I resolved that I was going to take voice lessons and become a great singer.
I burst onto the scene my freshman year of high school, and by the end of the year people had started to take notice. There was a lot of "Where did this kid come from?" going around whenever my chirpy little soprano piped up. After all, I grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, home of the world-renowned Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus. Good little singers came out of there. But I came into singing too late to have been a part of that organization. I had really just decided that I was going to be a singer and dedicated myself obsessively until I got it.
I re-taught myself piano and picked up guitar. I also got heavily involved in theatre, which has colored my whole career.
Soundtrack: Everything musical theatre, from classic Rodgers & Hammerstein to the unavoidable Andrew Lloyd Weber, with a special place in my heart for Hair. |
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I went away to college at The Boston Conservatory as a voice major, where I studied under Elisabeth Phinney. I had a great time at school and fell in love with Boston, which I still consider to be my "true home." I performed both in and outside school, building up a small following and finally earning a coveted spot in the opera department as an undergraduate opera emphasis major.
I went into school considering myself a general singer, rather than a classical singer- I sang arias, Broadway, folk music, and whatever else came my way. My response to the frequent question, "What kind of music do you want to sing?" was, "Everything!" Over the course of my college career, however, I grew more and more focused on classical music and opera, almost to the exclusion of other styles.
Soundtrack: All your basic opera: Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, and company. |
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Fortunately, a whimsical audition for the Boston Rock Opera my senior year came just in time to rescue me from my musical cubbyhole, re-exposing me to rock, pop, and musical theatre all in one show, Jesus Christ Superstar. This experience and the contacts is brought led me back towards non-classical music. Singing "bad Catholic music" at St. Clement's Shrine also helped me to rediscover my pop-star side. I was resistant when I first started out there, but by the time I left Boston I had grown to look forward to singing "Eagles' Wings."
Soundtrack: Local rock, Mass of Creation, and more and more contemporary classical music. |
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I stuck around Boston for awhile after graduation, then up and moved to France. I wanted to learn a foreign language, and Paris seemed as pleasant a destination to spend the next few years as any other. I studied at l'Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris under Tania Gedda, daughter of Nicolai Gedda, and at the CNR Boulogne-Billancourt under Liliane Mazeron. I had some lovely performance opportunities, and my non-classical-music open-mindedness reached a new level with my project Khaïron, which evolved from an experimental/industrial voice-guitar-synth-violin ensemble to a straight-up rock band to an acoustic trio. I had a lot of crazy experiences and reached my goal: fluent French. So I came back to the US.
Soundtrack: Indie rock, the bad French rap I was constantly exposed to.
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Now, wading through my varied experiences and influences, I'm taking what I've learned and appyling it to my art and my career. I've moved to New York, where I am setting out to sing and to be heard. So stop in at one of my performances, give me a listen, and let me know what you think!
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