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Music has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. Our family of six
girls all sang and played piano, and put together “productions”
as part of our play. Whenever we were in the car or bus, we were singing. I
studied piano as a young child, as well as ballet, theater and art. It was my
art training where I got my first taste of real discipline. I would stay in
the back of the art room and work on projects while the other kids goofed around.
I chose to go into music when I was thirteen, even though I couldn’t really
play yet, because I liked music and I wanted to be around people more than I
would be as a visual artist. I sought out a good teacher and went into intensive
training for several years. In high school, my choir director handed me an application
for a composition contest. I said, OK, and proceeded to win second prize both
that year and the following year. Later, I was a finalist for a national competition.
I have thought myself to be a composer over anything else I do in my life. I
remember choosing to go to music school so I could play my compositions. My
essential composition training was all via art classes.
I fell into the opportunity of working in radio in College, where I explored endlessly as much “Alternative Music” as I could both on the air and off the air. This created so many palettes of sound which I still draw from to this day in creating music. When I was at Kent State University, where I received my BA in Music, studying piano with Margaret Baxtresser, I had the chance to be introduced to the world of African Dance and Music with Professor Halim El Dabh, head of the World Music Institute, who brought over three great drummers from Nigeria for us to work with. Also, hearing the Indian, Japanese and Indonesian music ruminating in the halls penetrated into my being along with the classical training I was in school for.
After graduating from Kent State in 1983 I moved to Boston, where I was determined to be a “classical improvisor”. Over the ten years I was in Boston, I spent seven great years studying with Anne Farber and performing with the Longy Improvisation Ensemble, where several classical musicians played open improvisation together on a regular basis. I also got into poetry and piano, theater, performance art and multimedia. I went to New England Conservatory where I received my Masters in Music in 1988. I was most affected on a deep level by my study with George Russell on his Theory on the Lydian Chromatic Concept. His talk about cosmology became a central theme in my own work. At NEC I focused on playing “creative improvisation, utilizing a combination of score, instruction and open playing. My first performance was in Jimmy Giuffrie’s “Jazz Composers Concert”. I had the opportunity to write for several musicians, my first large score being “Mulasto”.
While I was in Boston I had many opportunities to connect with great artists. These experiences gave me a lot of strength and courage to pursue my own voice. Some key guides are Pauline Oliveros, Meridith Monk, Joan LaBarbara, Reggie Workman, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and Joseph Jarman.
When I came to New York in 1993, I joined the Brooklyn Buddhist Association to study Aikido and Buddhism with Joseph Jarman, as a way to be able to “weather” the New York life as a musician. It is only recently that I learned that other earlier influences (Oliveros, Monk, LaBarbara) are also deeply involved in Buddhism as an undercurrent of their life and work. The more I have studied, the more I have realized how integral this training is to my life as a musician and as an artist .
I have found that the sound is directly influenced in relationship to my own peace of mind. This tranquility in the sound has become much more predominant in my approach. I have found that singing, my initial ticket to loving music as a child, has become more and more an important part of this process. Most recently I have focused on the study of Indian Raga, which helps one to reach even a deeper sense of tone quality and pitch. This training brings one even closer to a deeper level of life awareness and tranquility.