Let’s face facts: I am a serious teacher for serious students. I was trained by serious teachers to be a serious singer, and I was a serious student. I sometimes shy away from owning this, wanting to appear fun and lighthearted, easy-going and cool. And I am  fun, lighthearted, and easy-going (cool, unfortunately impossible), but in appropriate amounts at appropriate times.

I have a confession:

In July, I had my first audition in 8 years.

I had a callback in January.

I did not get cast.

How can the loss of something you never had be so devastating?

It is, I believe, the greatest city on the planet. I’ve been fully indoctrinated into its magical ways and will always regard it as such. Even after ten years away, I miss the excitement, the glitter, the scope of possibilities… the allure is always there.

I would recommend it to anyone. Truly. I think it is an experience everyone should have. Not just visiting, but living there, working and struggling there, because it gives you gifts of enormous value: toughness, confidence, courage, wonder.

Julian taught me to sing, to make music, to act, that it was ok to love Opera and Musical Theatre equally. He helped me become a better and stronger person, to take risks on stage and off. And, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, he taught me how to be a voice teacher. He was always professional but so personable. He shared his gifts as an artist and as a human being freely, with love and generosity. He somehow always made me feel like I was his colleague as well as his student; such a gift to a young aspiring singer.

This is a story about the time my voice teacher convinced me to sing something I had no business singing by invoking the name of Leonard Bernstein.

I learned to teach every voice type, gender, vocal problem, temperament, and musical style.

I taught sopranos, mezzos, soprano belters, mezzo belters, sopranos how to belt and belters how to sing soprano; tenors, bari-tenors, baritones, basses, and baritones who wanted to be tenors; dancers who had never sung before and actors who had never sung before.

Once upon a time, I gave a solo recital in Paris. France. This is that story.

I used to joke with my parents that there was no way I could have been adopted (besides the fact that I am a dead ringer for my mother) because I had inherited all their faults and flaws… But of course my parents gave me much more than their problematic genes. Besides their unconditional love and unending support, they gave me their love of music.

I went to get my master’s degree in vocal performance right after college because what did I know at 21? Exactly nothing. Ok, not nothing, but I certainly wasn’t ready to enter the real world, and since I excelled in an academic environment, it seemed like a good next step. And was it ever! I got to work with and learn from world-class musicians and singers, met two of my most influential mentors and made some dear friends that endure to this day.

I’ve been a hopeless romantic since birth. Let me curl up with a good romantic novel and I’m happy (hello, Pride and Prejudice!).  I love romantic comedies: I know every word of When Harry Met Sally. And naturally, I love love songs; a good one will reduce me to tears.

When I auditioned for Into the Woods a few years ago, I desperately wanted to play the role of the Baker’s Wife…

But the director had other ideas. Not once did I read for either the Baker’s Wife or Cinderella, or any other role, barring one: The Witch.

I’ve been thinking about my beginnings in Musical Theater and my ten year old self a great deal recently. Even from the very beginning, I was fearless on stage, which is strange because I was, and in many ways still am, a very shy and fearful person. There were nerves to audition, certainly, but for some reason I wasn’t nervous on stage, not while singing.  There was something about performing, creating a character, inhabiting an imaginary world, that helped me transcend my fears and find only joy in the experience.

On September 9, 1998, I got on a plane in Portland, Oregon headed to New York City, New York. I had a purse, a carry-on, and two large suitcases. I had a temporary place to stay in a women’s dorm on 34th Street. I had the possibility of two jobs. And a voice teacher.

I moved to New York City to study with a voice teacher. But not just any voice teacher, THE voice teacher: Cornelius L. Reid

In March of 1998, my life changed forever. This was when I first met Cornelius Reid, the man who profoundly changed my singing voice, the way I sang, the way I thought about singing, the way I taught, the way I thought about and viewed the world, musically and otherwise, gave me a career, a profession and a new passion.

Functional listening is the cornerstone of the technique that I teach, taught to me by the late, great Cornelius Reid. This is the story of my introduction to both the maestro himself and the concept and transformative power on the singing voice of functional listening.

Tomorrow is December 1st which means that my family and I may now commence listening to and singing Christmas carols. I imposed this December 1st rule (or seen another way, the ban on Christmas music prior to December) many, many years ago when I actually burned out on Christmas music. How did such a terrible thing happen, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you.

But the older I got, the more important Thanksgiving became. I was suddenly acutely aware in my early twenties what the holiday really meant: a day to be grateful. Celebrating together with my family and friends and counting our blessings was just so very important and beautiful.

"Do you miss living in New York?” is a question I get asked on a regular basis these days. Some people look at me with great pity that I am no longer there; others look incredulous that I ever lived there in the first place. Do I miss New York City? No. Yes. Depends on the day, really.

I’m glad to know all those years watching The Wizard of Oz paid off.  Thank you Billie Burke! You were right there with me, whispering inspiration into my ear with your sweet, trilly voice. “Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Which?”  I am honored to follow in your footsteps. 

The signs had actually been everywhere that I would eventually find my way back to Musical Theater, I had just ignored them.