You’re performing “The Magic of Ordinary Things” at the end of this month. Tell me more about your event.
My show is a solo performance inspired by losing three of the most important people in my life. I call it a musical memoir — about how I struggled through grief and found happiness and a home inside myself.
Although the show is about loss, it’s not a melancholic show. It’s about how tender, wonderful and funny people can be together.
I note that you say it’s not melancholic. It’s almost as if you have to say that because people assume that if you’re dealing with grief and death, it will be heavy.
Yes, loss and memories are so much more than melancholy. There is that, of course, but also love and laughter and the moments we were close (are close still!) with those who have died.
How did you start writing the show?
I’ve been a performer for years in Los Angeles, on Broadway and in jazz clubs in The Bay Area, so performing and writing are part of who I am. Then I lost my father, my mother, and my singing teacher, who was like a mother to me — and it felt like it happened all at once.
As I kept going with the songwriting and singing, I felt like the songs tapped me on the shoulder and said, “hey we’re a show.”
I was putting together this show together last year when I heard Brad interviewed. [Brad Wolfe is the executive director of Reimagine End of Life.]
You said this show grew out of your grief. How did you go from grief to creation of your show? Wasn’t that a painful process?
It was a baffling and mysterious process. I kept living my life, but where the hell did my people go? I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bear that they were dead.
So I thought about when they were alive. I wrote songs. The songs were more about who they were in life. Who we were together.
I felt so alone. I asked myself, was I a good daughter? These songs were a way of coming back. They came from pain. The benefit was that I remembered my loved ones better. I got to know them better through writing the songs and singing them. My relationship with my parents deepened after they died. I thought and felt so much about what we had done together, how we had been together.
I was the closest companion for both my parents. First my Mother and Father and me. Then my Mother and me. Then Lilian, my Singing Teacher, and me.
Will this be the first time you’ve performed the show?
Yes, this show is premiering for Reimagine. Though I’ve sung some of the songs before. I put the songs together and wove them into a story.
What do you hope participants will get out of this?
Exactly the word you said. Hope.
What would you say has surprised you most about what you’re doing? What have you learned?
It reminded me of how much I learned from my parents, and about my parents. I would say relationships between Mothers and daughters can be fraught with tension. I was her only child. She was trying to fix me, which I resisted. I always loved her. Doing the show reminded me of her love for me and mine for her.
What do you do when you’re not performing a musical memoir?
I’m a vocal coach and I’m a singer-songwriter.
Tell me again where and when.
It’s at the Phoenix Theater on October 30 (Wednesday), November 1 (Friday), and November 2 (Sunday). The Phoenix is at 414 Mason. Suite 601.
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