About

My earliest memory is one of me looking at my hands tightly clutching a nickel I’d been given after singing Clancy Lowered the Boom while standing on the bar at Duffy’s Tavern in Painesville, Ohio. My mother says I was barely 3 years old at the time. I had a two-song repertoire, the other one being Buttons and Bows. In the late 1940s, before the advent of television, local watering holes functioned a bit more as “community centers” and my dad on occasion took me along with him, acting as my “impresario,” to the amusement and no doubt consternation of some patrons. I always found it ironic that my father later expressed surprise when I chose a life in show business! 

At 6 years old, I began piano lessons with a brilliant local teacher, Ferne Pearcie. From the beginning it was clear I had some talent and a serious interest in music. I sang in school and appeared frequently at the local Music and Drama salons, both singing and playing piano. In my teens it became evident that I didn’t possess the type of memory needed to become a concert pianist and I was gently encouraged to abandon pursuit of that career path.

I discovered folk music in my senior year of high school and bought myself a Gibson 12-string guitar with the money I received for graduation, turning professional almost immediately. I would sneak out of the dorm at Baldwin Wallace College in Cleveland to play weekend gigs. The club I worked in, La Cave, booked me quite often as the opening act for headliners like Josh White and Bob Gibson. I was a good singer and handled my 12-string pretty competently. I eventually left school and went on the road playing a circuit that stretched from Cleveland to Denver by way of Chicago. 

It didn’t take too long for life on the road to wear thin and I decided to return to Cleveland where I entered the broadcasting industry in radio, first as an assistant in the public relations department at WERE and WHK and then as one of the first female promotion directors in major market radio in the country at WIXY Radio. I moved from broadcast promotion to broadcast production when I became a commercial producer for Wyse Advertising and later a TV program creator and producing partner with Marc Wyse in Wyse Productions.  

I never stopped performing in local clubs during this period and eventually formed a duo act, Schroeder & Forest, with folksinger Bob Schroeder. It was then that I began writing songs, the first one being Occasional Lady, which we recorded for Another Brand New Day in Toronto, Canada where we immigrated in 1973. After that partnership dissolved, I attended John Brown College in a 2-year Piano Technology program studying with Edward “Ted” Sambell, a master piano technician.

While I apprenticed with Ted at the Banff Music Centre, I met and befriended choreographer Mauryne Allan, who subsequently commissioned me to compose a score for her modern dance company’s 1979 production of The Wizard of Oz in Vancouver, Canada. That project marked the beginning of my life as a composer. Since then, I have written jazz, folk and cabaret songs, created full-length works for symphony orchestra and chamber music groups, and produced award-winning recordings of educational music for children. I have written several major theatrical works, including an operetta, Viva Concha! Rose of the Presidio, based on the true story of the 1806 romance between San Francisco’s Concepción Arguello and Russia’s Nikolai Rezanov.  

My music has been performed in concert halls, theatres, coffeehouses and jazz clubs. I’ve also produced a variety of music projects for other artists, including Lua Hadar, Allison Lovejoy, Nancy Schimmel and Linda Hirschhorn. I am currently writing and producing The Best Bad Things, a unique theatre piece with music, based on the adventures of a cavalcade of remarkable women in San Francisco history. I continue to seek production opportunities for my other major works, including the aforementioned Viva Concha! Rose of the Presidio, The Wizdom of Oz and All In This Together, a symphonic celebration of the earth and her creatures.