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Talent
Development Resources...........music:
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As far
as a work ethic goes, I learned it early... I wasn't one of those kids
who got to play with my friends on Saturdays. On Saturdays we rehearsed
from 9 to 3.
On
Sundays I was singing in the church choir. I had my dance, voice and piano
lessons during the week, plus doing the cabaret show from 8 to 8:30 every
night. |
As
a 10-year-old that's a lot of responsibility, but it was good because I've
never known my life to be otherwise...
I'm
not good at sitting still for a very long time... it's not in my blood...
Performing
is a major part of who I am, so I feel that if I didn't do this, if I didn't
perform, in a way I would cease to exist. It's like my life force.
Audra
McDonald ...
[American Visions June, 2000]
 dvd:
My
Favorite Broadway - The Leading Ladies
|
~ ~
~ ~
| We were the
artists in the story and the music gave us a sense of striving spiritually
to communicate.
Lori Singer-
about her role as a cellist, and her character's mother, a jazz singer,
in film Short
Cuts
[at
age thirteen, Singer won a scholarship to the Juilliard
School of Music]
|
 |
~ ~
~ ~
Carla Lucero
Most people wouldn't
consider the notorious "lesbian serial killer" Aileen Wuornos
your typical lyric heroine,
but for Bay area composer and librettist Carla Lucero,
Wuornos' life story has
all the elements that make up a great opera.
"It was really something
you could pull out of a Greek tragedy ... murder, betrayal,
self-sacrificing love, even
the traumatic family," says Lucero over sushi at a San Francisco
Japanese restaurant. "Wuornos",
Lucero's first full-scale opera, debuted at the Jon Sims
Center for the Arts in San
Francisco in June and is likely to tour worldwide.
Wuornos is making history
in the opera community by adding Lucero to a small group
of female composers who
have actually seen their work in full-scale production. (New York's
Metropolitan Opera last
performed an opera by a woman in 1903.) Breaking the tradition
of the "old boys' club"
still firmly in place in the opera world, Lucero explores the world
of violence and sexual abuse
toward women through Wuornos' painful history.
[from article: "Killer
Opera" By Erin Raber; photo by Karima Cherif; from Curve
mag.]
~ ~
~ ~
Jamie
Anderson "I'm a nationally touring feminist singer-songwriter-comic
who's performed
at a lot of universities. I sing
about body image, sexuality, male priviledge, breast cancer and
other topics. My shows are usually
sponsored by Women's Studies, Women's Centers and GLBT groups."
~ ~ ~ ~
*******Melissa
Etheridge
The
one thing that did keep me safe, that gave me a feeling of comfort growing
up,
was
music. Music took me somewhere safe-a place where I was happy and free
and
comfortable
being myself.
I knew
from a very young age that music was something I wanted to be a part of.
It
was something that made me feel good and helped me escape to a place where
life
was
how I always dreamed it should be. ...
My
guitar teacher, Mr. Don Raymond, an old big-band jazz guitarist... was
a serious musician
and
he taught me to be a serious musician and to take my lessons very earnestly.
... Before I knew it,
I
was playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Sugar, Sugar." Playing them
for real.
I was
making the music. Not pretending anymore.
from book:
The
Truth Is... : My Life in Love and Music by Melissa Etheridge and Laura
Moreland
~ ~
"The intention of this album
[Skin] was to have no limits -- to record each song the way it was meant
to be,"
explains Etheridge. "I believed
when we were recording that all of the songs would all fit together because
they were coming from the
same cathartic experience. So, no matter what kind of music we were using,
no matter what direction
the song was going, they fit together thematically."
"It's just me," laughs Etheridge,
listing the members of her recording band. "I used Pro Tools for the first
time
and made an album without
a band. I wrote the songs, chose the loops, and then went into the small
room at
Village Studio in Santa
Monica. My executive producer, Carter, brought in David Cole, a producer-engineer
who knows how to record
the real thing -- he's worked with everyone from Bob Seger to N'Sync. He
and I
put the whole thing together
ourselves." [from Fan Asylum bio]
CD: Skin
by Melissa Etheridge
book: Pro
Tools: Practical Recording, Editing and Mixing for Music Production
by Mike Collins
~ ~
~ ~
Lysa
Flores*******
*******
[In her early career, some
of her songs revolved around
the not-so-pleasant aspects
of personal relationships.
With such honesty subject
to interpretation, listeners
came away with mixed messages.]
"A lot of women would appreciate
what I was saying, but men would say
'why do you hate guys?'
especially when I was younger, when I had a more
aggressive attitude. But
it was my person, my experiences that I was sharing...
People have a choice to appreciate
what I'm doing, or not. It's not a reflection
of who they are. It was
[when I decided] to name my record label "Bring Your Love"
that I began the transition
that had to be made. That is what I'm doing, bringing my love
and my person and my experiences
to share with everybody else.
It doesn't mean that they
have to accept it or even understand the love.
It's just sharing, and that
way I feel better about what I'm doing."
Lysa Flores [from article
on LatinoLA.com]
CD: Tree
of Hope
portrait image from Lysa
Flores
site
"Sagrado Corazon" digital
art by Alma Lopez for Lysa Flores Band - image from artist
site
<< related page: digital
imaging
~ ~
~ ~
 |
Everything
you write doesn't have to be good for everybody. There are going to be
people that get irritated by some things I write...
And
then there are going to be people that you draw in because of the abrasiveness
or the pointedness of certain things... as I get older, everything becomes
a little more acute, a little more intense. I really want to get down to
the bottom of it... into the thick of it." Sheryl
Crow |
book:
Greatest
Hits So Far: Guitar/Tab/Vocal by Sheryl Crow
~
~ ~ ~
"It seems
to me that those songs that have been any good,
I have nothing
much to do with the writing of them. The words
have just crawled
down mysleeve and come out on the page."
Joan Baez
[posted in TheWrittenWordEZine@topica.com]
~ ~
~ ~
 |
It's
scary [to open yourself up publicly], but for some reason the more honest
I am,
the
safer I feel...
Actually,
I feel like I'm becoming more myself as I mature.
What's
just needy or scared - those things tend to fall away with the years.
Jewel
... [Interview mag. Oct.00] / her book: Chasing
Down the Dawn |
~ ~
~ ~
|
"I finally learned that
within me there lay an invincible summer." Albert Camus ///
"[After
finishing my tour] I was edging out on being very burned out, jaded, bored
and cynical. The quote [by Camus] is about me finding that burning sun
inside me again."
k.d. lang [LA Times,
6.11.0] more quote on page: positive
psychology
|
~ ~
~ ~
Sarah
McLachlan
"When I remind McLachlan
of our very first interview in the city in 1989
during which she rode up
to greet me on a mountain bike, she smiles at the
memory. "I feel like I've
retained a lot of that humility, that groundedness,"
says McLachlan. "That, to
me, is one of the absolutely most important elements
in life. I can't do anything
properly if I'm not grounded.
It's just the most fundamental
thing that I need. Life on the road for me
has always been a real struggle
because I lose that often. ... "There's been
an occasional backlash for
that but I am. I'm needy and I don't think it's
anything to be embarrassed
about. It's just really honest. It's kind of
the only way I know how
to be. It's forced. I really want to be honest
because I hate myself when
I become anything else." ///
"The early '90s there was
just such really strong male energy, frustrated,
angry, X-generation kind
of energy and I think a lot of the music coming
out these days, largely
by women, is a lot more introspective and just
dealing with other things."
Sarah McLachlan
[from interview: Toronto Sun 1997]
CDs: Fumbling
Towards Ecstasy Lilith
Fair Surfacing
book: Judith Fitzgerald Sarah
McLachlan: Building A Mystery
artwork: McLachlan
has designed notecards to benefit RAINN
- the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
~ ~ ~ ~
 |
"I consider myself mixed-race because
my father was white and my mother was black.
My stepfather felt that I needed
to be smarter than my white peers, but I always wanted
to be a collage of different energies."
Daphne Rubin-Vega
[played 'Mimi' in the Broadway play "Rent"] [quote
from Soloella.com] |
~ ~ ~ ~
[How do you want people to see you now?]
Grace Slick: Unstoppable lunatic. It's pretty much what
I see in the mirror.
[Why lunatic?] The reason I put `lunatic'
there is because if you
base my life against most people's lives, obviously there's
a screw loose
there somewhere, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
When you get old
you don't regret what you did, you regret what you didn't
do.
[What are you most proud of?] My persistence.
I don't usually give up.
[When has persistence been the most useful for you?]
With everything.
It comes in with art, it comes in with relationships,
it comes in with
physical disabilities. You just don't stop. Unstoppable
lunatic. [Associated Press. 03-14-01]
Grace Slick Somebody
to Love? : A Rock-And-Roll Memoir
~ ~
~ ~
"I
never expected anybody to get it, much less like it. I did this record
for me.
Bill
and I made a record that we wanted to be able to sit down and listen to
in
five
years and go, 'Damn, it's still good.'
And
you know, man, I figured if everybody got their hands on it and people
that really listen
to
music could hear it, they could understand where I'm coming from.
I just
wanted to make a great piece of work. I didn't expect anything. . . . I
didn't expect every damned
magazine
and all that. So it's cool, it's great. ... It had to happen. I didn't
have
any
patience or need to do a record about songs that I didn't know anything
about.
So
I wrote them and I lived them."
Shelby Lynne [Dallas
Morning News, June 25, 2000]
CD I
Am Shelby Lynne
~ ~ ~ ~
Peggy Seeger: "Songwriting
helps me to live in the present, 'at the same time as myself',
as Ewan MacColl used to
say. It is my way of trying to let tomorrow's people know part
of what it was like to be
alive today.. of trying to change things, attempting to re-interpret
old thoughts or introduce
new ways of looking at the same old problems, the same old poverty...
apathy, destruction, ignorance...
It is also a way of holding up a mirror to ourselves in all of our
tragic and comic poses."
[from her
site]
 |
"As
a child, I always knew that I was different from everybody, and I'm
sure
most artists will tell you that because it's a true story.
You're
different. You know people don't accept you. You don't really fit in
too
much, and you know there's something wonderful if you continue
to
be an individual." musician Erykah Badu [Reuters, Dec.22.00] |
~ ~
~ ~
Madonna
"I grew
up in a patriarchal, male dominated society. It's very difficult
for a woman
to escape that kind of society and the restrictions the society forces,
or tries to
force upon a woman... a society which firmly believes that a woman
can't be erotic
and intelligent at the same time...
That's not an
issue for me anymore, because I know I'm both!" ...
but I never
wanted to change the world and turn the male domination
into a female
domination. What I did, I did for myself - to free myself."
[from "Girl Power: Women in the Music
Industry" by Gabriella Schleinkofer, winmagazine.org]
~ ~ ~
book:Madonna:
In Her Own Words
~ ~
~ ~
 |
Carly
Simon: "[Songwriting]
is the only way I know how to combine the various creative talents of mine
-- including the obsession with how I am. I'm obsessive about self-analysis.
I suppose it's a good marriage for me to be therapeutic and creative at
the same time ... it's in my creativity that I get better.''
(talking
about her recovery from cancer) [Miami Herald, 5.14.00]
book:
Carly
Simon: Lyrics
|
<< related page:
mental
health
~ ~ ~
~
"In some ways, I feel this whole
thing about pop motherhood is uncharted territory.
So few women talk or write about
what it's like, what it does to their creativity and
their drive. Yet it's this utterly
transforming experience, and there was no way it couldn't
enter into my writing once I started
again." singer/songwriter Shawn Colvin [LA Times 3.24.01]
CDWhole
New You
book:
A
Few Small Repairs by Shawn Colvin "Titles in this matching
folio to Colvin's Grammy-nominated
album are: 84,000 Different Delusions *
The Facts About Jimmy * Get Out of
This House * I Want It Back * If I Were Brave *
New Thing Now * Nothin' on Me * Suicide
Alley * Sunny Came Home * Trouble *
Wichita Skyline * You and the Mona
Lisa."
~ ~
~ ~
 |
This
whole process of grief and recovery has been very, very meaningful in resurrecting
and almost re-creating the whole reason for my work, my singing.
Why
was I so passionate about music? Why has it been the bridge between my
own darkness and illumination?
It
has a purpose. It's saved my own life, and people tell me it's been very
meaningful for them at certain times to hear my songs. I've got to keep
singing."
Judy Collins
- speaking of her son's suicide) [Seattle Times, 1998] [her
book: Singing
Lessons]
|
~ ~
~ ~
Diamanda Galás,
possessor of a four octave vocal range and an urgent need to awake
the morally dead or sleeping,
has gleaned many epithets from those wishing to understand
or decry her uniquely important
body of work.
"Bride of Satan", "Diva of
Disease", "Black Rose of the Avant Garde" are but a few.
"I'm not interested in convincing
people like that that I'm not a sinner," she has said
of her Right-wing, reactionary
critics. "I'm very glad that they think that. I consider it
a mark of absolute flattery,
of absolute respect. And then I can see that the only resolution
is to say, "If you think
I wear the cloak of filth, then let me tell you baby, I wear it real good."
But far from advocating hedonism,
Galás first rose to international prominence with her
three album 'Plague Mass',
originally titled
Masque
Of The Red Death after Edgar Allen Poe's
inspirational story, a requiem
for those dead and dying of AIDS.
Described as "the first,
last and possibly only musical word of AIDS", the trilogy constituted
a massive statement - part
investigation, part scathing moral critique on the politics, theology
and sociology of the plague
mentality surrounding AIDS.
Galás drew on religious
texts, in particular the Old Testament, for the opening 'The Divine
Punishment'; the poems of
French Catholic Charles Baudelaire for the following 'The Saint
Of The Pit', and finally,
the gospel spirituals of black slaves powered her vision on the final
'You Must Be Certain Of
The Devil', wherein Diamanda firmly indicted Middle America as
the home of Satan in the
form of bigotry, hypocrisy and benightedness.
"The devil here is not some
abstract, gothic figure," she said. "He is, in my definition,
the coward, the man who
is spiritually impotent, the homophobe, the wilfully blind,
the deserter."
[from bio on her
site]
~ ~
~ ~
.....Enya
Pilgrim,
how you journey on the road you chose
to
find out why the winds die and where the stories go.
All
days come from one day that much you must know,
you
cannot change what's over but only where you go.
One
way leads to diamonds, one way leads to gold,
another
leads you only to everything you're told.
In
your heart you wonder which of these is true;
the
road that leads to nowhere, the road that leads to you.
Will
you find the answer in all you say and do?
Will
you find the answer In you?
Each
heart is a pilgrim, each one wants to know
the
reason why the winds die and where the stories go.
Pilgrim,
in your journey you may travel far,
for
pilgrim it's a long way to find out who you are...
~ ~
pilgrim : Music: Eithne Ní
Bhraonáin [Enya] - Lyrics: Roma Ryan
from CD: Enya A
Day Without Rain lyrics
from her site
~ ~
~ ~
*****Laurie
Anderson
I think [my
friend] was thinking of the Sermon on the Mount
when he told
me it was okay to be an artist. I was complaining all the time about
paying my rent:
How am I going to eat? How am I going to go on?
He said, 'You've
got it all wrong. First you have to say, `What do I want to make
as an artist?
What do I want to do as an artist?' These other things are unimportant
?
they'll happen
anyway. Once you get your priorities straight, you'll be surprised what
happens."
[Bomb
mag, July.99]
CDs: Big
Science Talk
Normal: The Anthology
book: Roselee Goldberg.
Laurie
Anderson
~ ~
~ ~
Hélène
Grimaud
Music changed my life. I was quite
an agitated and agitating
child before I had music training.
As a matter of fact, a psychologist
told my parents later on that without
music I could have easily
become a delinquent of the worst
sort!... music gave my life a sense
of purpose and direction.
Music taught me that you should never
let anyone convince you
that your dreams are outlandish.
Few things are more condescending,
and what a tragedy it would be if
you believed it.
Our backgrounds and circumstances
may have influenced who we are but,
ultimately, we are responsible for
who we choose to become, and it takes
a long time to become the person
you want to be.
I have learned that it is not what
happens to us that is important - it is
what we do about it. Studying music
also taught me that you should not
compare yourself to others but only
to your last best effort, that you
cannot get by on charm for very long,
that music sharpens your senses,
imagination, creativity and intuition.
[from "letter from Hélène"
- posted on playmusic.org website]
CDs: Beethoven:
Piano Concerto no 4, Sonatas | Gershwin,
Ravel: Piano Concertos
interviews:
Aeone
composer and singer
She says that her album "is the music
that has become my own
private odyssey - but the journey
of a woman is universal to all. I'm absolutely not
a women's lib person, I'm just an
advocate for creativity, which is in the feminine
part of ourselves, whether we're
male or female."
She wrote music for the TNT miniseries
"The Mists of Avalon."
in addition to a CD available
on her site, Aeone has a cut on cd:
Celtic
Journey
~
~ ~
Gerri
Gribi musician and women's historian - "There had to be woman-positive
songs."
~
~ ~
Vonda
Shepard [article from Electra Magazine] "Ain't it funny how you're
walkin'
through life/and it turns on a dime?"
sings Vonda Shepard... on the much-anticipated
new album, Songs From Ally McBeal
... The line summarizes the songwriter-performer's
own destiny, from her ups and downs
in the music biz to her ongoing troubadour role
on Fox's smash TV series."
CD: Heart
And Soul: New Songs From Ally McBeal Featuring Vonda Shepard
~
~ ~ ~
~ ~
~ ~
CD:Cheap
Thrills -- Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin
video:Monterey
Pop: The Film (1967) -- Grace Slick, Janis Joplin
book:
Love,
Janis by Laura Joplin "When
Laura Joplin stumbled on a bundle of old letters
from
her famous big sister, she discovered an innocent, eager-to-please side
of Janis that no one
had
suspected. Intrigued, Laura interviewed Janis's friends and associates
to get a true picture of her sister's life."
*site:**Operas
by Women "devoted to operas composed by women."
~ ~ ~ ~
--books
Judy Collins Singing
Lessons
Hedda Garza. Joan
Baez : Mexican-American Folksinger
David Hajdu. Positively
4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez
Farina, and Richard Farina
Kathleen Hudson, Sam Phillips.
Telling
Stories, Writing Songs : An Album of Texas Songwriters
"Willie Nelson, Joe Ely,
Marcia Ball, Tish Hinojosa, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lyle Lovett . . . the list
of popular songwriters from Texas just goes on and on. In this collection
of thirty-four interviews with these and other songwriters, Kathleen Hudson
pursues the stories behind the songs, letting the singers' own words describe
where their songs come from and how the diverse, eclectic cultures, landscapes,
and musical traditions of Texas inspire the creative process." [Amazon.com]
Madonna:
In Her Own Words
Lucy O'Brien. She
Bop II: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul
Diane Sward Rapaport, Loreena McKennitt.
How
to Make and Sell Your Own Recording
~ ~ ~
Audio CD :
Self-Hypnosis For Musicians
- by Sam Brown <available
in England and U.S.>
"a
seamless self-hypnosis program tailored to the individual's needs. This
CD will help you with general performance related issues such as confidence,
self-esteem and stage presence, sight-reading and concentration. There
are also two powerful tracks addressing pre-gig mental preparation and
visualization."
~ ~ ~ ~
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