Music has always felt like home to me.
From a young age I loved to sing and found myself wanting to be around music and musicians. I was fortunate to have a piano teacher as a neighbor growing up, and my parents signed me up for lessons when I was in Kindergarten.
It was clear to both me and my teacher early on that I would not be a great piano player, but she did notice I had some latent talents. She told my parents I had a good ear, a strong sense of pitch, and a nice voice. And she could tell I loved music. “I think your child is a singer,” she said. “She’s singing all the time, even during my piano lessons.”
Ever since then I’ve been singing. I began taking voice lessons while still in elementary school, joined the church choir and the school choir. I even joined the band, where I learned to play several instruments. But none were as natural to me as my voice.
By the time I got to high school, however, I began to let music slip away. My home life was tumultuous and I was focused on simply getting out into the world. I went from signing in multiple groups to not singing at all. Within a few years, none of my friends even knew that I sang, much less just how music had once meant to me. Every now and then, a friend would hear me singing along with a song on the radio, at a concert or at a bar, and they would look at me with a sense of shock.
Twenty years later . . .
. . . in the midst of a long career as a business consultant, I began teaching a class about creativity. I would regularly tell my students that creativity was like a muscle they had to exercise. I encouraged them to take up creative projects outside of work, because it could help them think more creatively in their jobs. But I wasn’t following my own advice. I thought my business was my creative work. But creativity doesn’t need to make you money. It doesn’t need to build your brand. It needs to feed your mind and soul. I had spent the past two decades focused on building my business and I’d neglected the part of myself that had given me so much joy for the first half of my life.
Then, in 2018, as my father was nearing the end of his life, he asked me if would do something for him. He had just entered hospice and was thinking about his memorial service. He wanted to know if I would sing Amazing Grace at his funeral. When I was a kid my Dad was my biggest fan. He came to all of my concerts and always tried to sit in the first row. But when he asked if I would stand up and sing in front of people for the first time in 20 years, I told him I wasn’t sure if I could do it.
When the day came, I simply wasn’t ready. The loss of my father hit me very hard and I was in no condition to perform. But shortly after the service I had an idea. What if I recorded the song he asked me to sing in his memory? So I set out to find a voice coach . . .
My dad and me sometime in the 90s.
I searched around and tried a few options before a friend recommended Keri Noble to me. I sent Keri an email telling her my story and sharing that I would like to work on memorializing my dad with a song. She responded almost immediately. She had recently lost her mom and was still working through her own grief. It seemed like our convergence was meant to be. So we got to work. We started with getting me used to performing again. While I was very comfortable with public speaking in the context of my job, I wasn’t used to singing in public. Keri has multiple recitals each year and I signed up to perform alongside the teens and pre-teens — something I had never expected to do. Learning to perform is very different as an adult. We’ve been trained to not take chances or let ourselves look like we don’t know what we’re doing. Learning a new skill takes patience and humility — two things most of us leave behind in childhood. It took every ounce of courage to get up and sing in front of people. It had nothing to do with how accepting they were, it had everything to do with the stories I told myself.
Then, after much practice and hard work, Keri helped me find the right people to make my recording. It turned out beautifully and I am so happy with the results.
I will never forget standing next to Keri’s piano as we listened to the final product. When it was done playing, she looked at me and said, “I feel like you’ve still got a lot of stories to tell. I think it’s time you get to telling them.”
And with lots of love and support from Keri and many others, I’ve been telling them ever since!
reativity doesn’t need to make you money. It doesn’t need to build your brand. It needs to feed your mind and soul.
Learn more about my music and find out where you can listen. Thank you for visiting!