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Funny how the word "encouragement" contains the word "courage". My first jazz vocal mentor told me that I was "gonna make a lot of people happy". The simple concept that I could lift someone's spirits by singing to them gave me a great reason to go forward on my path and continues to this day. As singers we open up the possibility for people to feel their emotions and remember how connected we all are.
One of my teachers was Martin Grusin (cousin to both jazzer/arranger/composer Dave Grusin and the amazing Mel Torme) and his system boiled down to 3 things, I called it the Button System: B-breathing, T-timing, and N-non-distortion of vowels. The breath is the core of everything, the timing refers to the liasons between words by using the consonants to "launch" the next word (my eyes = my-yies), and vowels are where you can let that breath serve the song and your voice together. Martin taught so many professionals and he taught good technique that served his students on stage for years; his advice lives on in our hearts.
"Plant your feet and tell the truth"...
One of the best things I've learned is to not be impatient or in too much of a hurry. Going slowly and thoroughly actually gets you there quicker.
My parents, who were my first teachers, always told me to “do what you love, and the money will follow”. I’ve taken that to heart for my whole career and am thankful that I am living my dream.
I remember Phil Mattson helping me trust my improvisation ears by telling me to: start improvising over EVERYTHING I heard- on the radio regardless of the style. So, I began scatting over classical radio, country radio, and all the pop stuff I was listening to in those days- Then, when I lived in cities like NYC I would sometime improvise over the city sounds- those brakes on buses sure make a lot of music to improvise over! I think processes like that one increased my "sense of play" and opened me up to be ready to improvise at any second. Freedom of expression!