"Smooth, Smoky, Silky Jazz Vocalist"
My Road to Today....
It has been an adventure "living" the
music I am! Looking at the picture of me from the seventies where I started singing professionally takes me back to my college days when I performed with Funk-a-fied Band and Show! Those were some wild and crazy days! We were a thirteen piece band and I was the only female in the group! We opened for some icons though! Earth, Wind, and Fire; Tavares; The Jimmy Castor Bunch; Donald Byrd and the Blackbyrds to name a few. Good times, great memories! Funk-a-fied produced artists such as Reggie Calloway of Midnight Star. We stay in touch today. Good people!
The eighties was a time of studying my craft. I went to Boston, MA where I enrolled in the Elma Lewis School of Performing Arts and studied under Elma herself who gave me tidbits of wisdom, not only about the business, but who I am as an Artist. From there I journeyed to my home town, Cincinnati, OH where I studied at the Music Center and at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. I also studied with Eugene Goss, a Voice Coach renowned for his work with Phyllis Hyman...coincidence, I think not! Who knew I'd be meeting this lovely lady and performing her music?! The Universe sure has a sense of humor!
Since 2005, I have focused on fulfilling my call of being a vessel that inspires, empowers, and celebrates life with my voice, with my songs, with my desire to live life fully, in love. I believed so fully that it was time to do this. I started off performing standards, gospel, jazz, and contemporary jazz. Unity Churches welcomed the old standards so I performed them often. An old friend, Roscoe Lee Owens of the Jazz Zone approached me to join forces and I started performing at all types of venues singing jazz standards.
Soon the urging came to me to do more with the music. I sought the wisdom of friends like Bennie Maupin who told me to write, write, write and do a CD! Songs that I wrote years past came to me so I brought them back to life for the Cd project, A Sip of Cheri. This five song Cd was a mixture of inspirational and love songs that introduced my work. I sold and gave away all of them at performances.
By then the idea of doing a tribute to Phyllis Hyman pulsed through me. Deep down I knew I must convey a better time in her life that showed her zest for living, so I went back to songs she sang about love, wonderful love. This concept made me think more and more about the songs I was to sing. I recalled how contemporary jazz was in the 70"s...lyrics that spoke, music that moved. My music was much like that! As I thought about it, what came to me was spiritual jazz, then jazzin' the spirit! Spiritual jazz didn't capture what my music was really about. I want to play my music anywhere and everywhere, so Jazzin' the Spirit came and stayed! It is my way of expressing the Spirit in all of us through Jazz music! I said YES to this and so it is today!
