She did over 6,000 professional performances from age 15 onward, including performing for Madonna. Among the vast media coverage she has received over the years are features on the Lifetime and ABC television networks and in the New York Times. She wrote a full-length musical and was at one point named the top children’s entertainer in New York. She has done private and semi-private teaching of voice, piano, and songwriting. A workshop designer and leader, artist, and artist in residence, she talks – among other topics – about her CD, “Noisy Joy to the Bonehouse Blues.”
“Trusting your feelings about these things are so important. Not second-guessing ‘will it be liked by someone’ or a group of someones, or will it be accepted by x, y, or z, but to truly own it as an expression of who you are, I think that’s so very important. And then if you decide that you want to put it out into the world commercially, or not commercially, rather than just having it be something that you express but keep private, that’s a choice.”
“Nothing is done in a vacuum. And yet, you can feel pressured if you choose to. Or you can look at whatever parameters are given as a kind of creative element, some of the spices that you might cook it with.”
“Everyone has the potential to make music. Not everybody has the potential to be a professional musician. But we’ve relegated our music to professionals and taken it away from the everyday.”
“Being attuned very acutely to your environment: Once you know how to do that and you know how to filter that through all of your senses, then you can start to express that through creative arts.”
“(Paul Simon) is not the world’s greatest singer, by any means, but he’s able to marry the song with his voice so beautifully. It’s really superb.”
“Fifty percent is learning the technical side. That could mean how to sing it, how to play it, how to do both, how to write it well, how to do all of the above. But, to take care of the technical side of things. And the other fifty percent is about the emotions and all of the… guts that go into all of it. And when you put the two of them together, it’s synergistic and you get more than the sum of the parts.”
“I worked at every school, every library, every church, every synagogue, every corporate thing in New York City for many years. There were years in a row that I was doing 350 shows a year.”
"I Sing to Me"
"The Bonehouse Blues"