STORY
7 Months
By the time I was 4, I was pretty much obsessed with singing and dancing… a born performer.
As a toddler, I was most attuned to touch and sound.
When I was born, my family was living in Cuernavaca, Mexico. My parents were American ex-patriots who had been part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Communists from the U.S., who met in Spain fighting the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War.
Though I never met her, I was named after Pilár Aman: an Opera singing friend of my mother’s who was Ernest Hemingway’s Spanish teacher.
From the very beginning, the beauty of the Spanish language surrounded me, and though my bloodlines are French, English, Russian, and African American (Father / Black Poet RAY DUREM - read more), I was infused with the passion of the Latin soul.
By the time I was 4, I was pretty much obsessed with singing and dancing… a born performer.
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7 Years
I just knew I liked smooth, hot grooves in any language or genre.
I was reared between Los Angeles, Guadalajara, and Mexico City. When I was nine, I began playing flute and studying classical music. I wrote my first song at eleven, and even then I could feel the power of saying what I wanted to say instead of interpreting someone else’s feelings.
These are the years when, besides mariachis and boleros, I felt the Cuban and Brazilian influences begin to seep into my musical awareness. I just knew I liked smooth, hot grooves in any language or genre.
Of course, as an American girl, I lived for soul music: Aretha, Motown, and anything that had sexy running through it. I also loved Bach, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland.
I loved Tina, Ramsey Lewis, Wes Montgomery, Danny Kaye, Leonard Bernstein, and so many more…Johnny Mathis..the most beautiful technique I’ve ever seen…and the Beatles changed my life, as they changed so many musical lives.
I felt something greater than ourselves come into the culture, and I knew I was a part of it.
At fifteen, I left home, drawn like a magnet to San Francisco California.
17 Years
A most magical connection.
I was on my own.
I began to meet people and make a name for myself in the San Francisco Bay Area. Singing and playing flute anywhere I could: Renaissance Faires, local clubs, and private parties.
I met and lived with a phenomenal group of Stanford University graduates called the Gestalt Fool Theatre Family.
One of the most dynamic members of that group was an actor named Donald Currie. We started a singing duo that made quite a stir. He was my first songwriting teacher. And even though his degree was in theatre, he was so gifted, that one day he just sat down at a piano and began writing over 20 songs.
I was fortunate enough to fall into his draft.
Around this time, I also met the well-known composer Gary Malkin. He was my first true songwriting collaborator: a musician just dripping with talent, and the results were many beautiful songs.
Our connection was so strong, music wasn’t enough, so I married him.
A most magical connection.
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27 Years
It was happening all at once: the mystical, the musical, and the personal…
When I was 18, an astrologer told me I am a mystic. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew I felt a pull toward the supernatural. The pull began to grow stronger every year.
I was also feeling an internal call to go very deep: both as a musician, and even more importantly, as a person.
Around this time I stopped listening to other people’s music.
I began to take my own singing and songwriting more seriously. It was happening all at once: the mystical, the musical, and the personal… Leading me down an ecstatic, demanding, and mysterious path.
Leading me home.
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37 Years
Surrendering more and more of myself to the muse.
It was around this time I met Michael Hatfield.
A most important collaborator.
He was AMAZING. So comprehensively talented. Utterly Trustworthy.
He taught me to listen inside myself for the bass line, and to find the groove in my own body.
Most of the songs on my CD FIERCE JOY, are the result of our co-creation.
We also co-wrote / co-produced one of the most inspired and intelligent Children’s CDs ever: RAINBOW OF FRIENDS.
The first 6 songs are the daytime songs: cheerful, exciting, and lively. Music to dance into the day. The second 6 songs are soothing and magical. To bless the them and put them to sleep.
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I also had the good fortune to work with the talented producer Sheilah Glover. During our collaboration we laughed ourselves silly, and I fell deeply in love with her. That love helped create FIERCE JOY.
Somewhere in here I met another musical love. The exquisite guitarist John Hoy. Upon first hearing, one cannot help but fall in love with his playing. Intangible.
During these years, I just kept singing and writing and teaching.
Surrendering more and more of myself to the muse.
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47 Years
A most exciting time...
It was during this time I met my most important collaborator.
The COLOSSUS John Barnes.
This partnership launched a most prolific era of songwriting.
Track after Track he would send me, and I would write a song to it.
I made a vow to write a song to Every single track he ever gave me.
It was the most exciting discipline.
A songwriter's heaven.
The magnitude of his sensitivity. His ear. His humor. His love for me.
His fiery and demanding expectations of me and my talent.
A most exciting time.
He’s gone now, but our love is the songs.
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57 Years
I was doing my personal work. Facing my shadows.
In these years I crashed to Earth.
Faced so much about myself and the human world.
So many parts of which I’d never lived. Never learned.
Never understood. Never accepted.
I learned finally how to love unconditionally.
Not as a mystic or performer...but as a woman.
I was doing my personal work. Facing my shadows.
Stripping my ego.
And ignoring the world.
I kept loving, writing, singing, and staying on my path.
No Matter What.
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67 Years
Now it's lift off.
The pandemic didn’t hit me that hard.
It fit my already hermetic lifestyle.
But the smoke from the fires nearly did me in. Lost my singing voice.
Two years of not fully breathing, and not singing at full capacity poleaxed me.
Had to start from scratch, like Tiger Woods, finding a new swing.
So I studied with Pilár.
Everything I had taught my students, I had to apply to myself. I trusted myself.
I asked for help to move through the frozen membranes. Recalibrated my identity.
I am now exactly where I want to be.
In the most glorious state of being ever, in any lifetime.
Free.
Free to love and make music in my own way.
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This is my last lifetime.
I consciously knew that when I was 15.
Still true.
Now it’s lift off…Gonna make every moment sensational.
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