I DID end up being accepted into this summer's Cabaret Conference at Yale-and I am completely JAZZED!

Here is the slightly unconventional music bio I sent with my audition DVD:

I’m in Hollywood. The year is 1988. My friends say there’s a perfect role for me in a new show called Les Miserables, so I head to the open call. By 10AM there are 2200 people in line. I help a blind woman across the street (she is disoriented by the huge crowd), and she gives me a lucky quarter. I am 7 months pregnant, and lordy, lordy, a week later I get the job.

This will mean my Equity card and two and a half years of work at the Schubert Theater in LA--then a call to play Cosette for a year at the Curran in San Francisco. I am the only Cosette I know who doesn’t fantasize about being Fantine or Eponine. I love singing the softly shimmering high C every night, glad to be part of the show. I still have that lucky quarter.

I have sung in so many ways and forms over the years. But this story says something about luck and how well it combines with a thousand voice lessons, and singing with your whole heart.

For a while in Hollywood, I hosted a weekly open stage called Maxi’s Cabaret. I could write a novel about this. Or it would make a great reality show: the seedy restaurant, the plucky hopefuls, the bizarre connections. All those characters, loving the work at whatever level. We were not all good, but we were all interesting, for sure.

I tell stories because I’m a little bit Irish and whole lot chatty. I love the way you can reframe an old song with a new story and make it live like it was just written. Or how a new song can tell an age-old tale as if for the first time. And how an operatic aria can sit next to a 70’s hit, if they have the right words between them.

I did a solo concert in November of 2007 that felt like flying. People sang along, they laughed and cried.  One month later, I had a breast cancer diagnosis that would take a year of treatment to resolve. (I say hooray for scary chemicals and brilliant doctors).

Now I know more surely than ever that life is sweet, that for me the songs are the thing, and that I want to go wherever they lead. I want to honor them the best way I can. I’m guessing you know exactly what I mean.