Earlier this month marked the anniversary of the date the Kickstarter campaign was successfully funded. With the help of 112 backers (and the MN State Arts Board) I successfully raised the funds to complete my debut solo album – What the Music Says Do.

I cannot believe that’s it’s only been a year since I was in the studio recording the album. And I am astonished at how quickly the time since the CD release event in August has gone. Speaking of …

We had SO MUCH FUN(!) at my CD release party! I wasn’t sure I could begin to describe what it was like to get all gussied up, load up my CDs, head out to the Dunsmore Room and sing an evening’s worth of my own songs with so many of the truly amazing singers and players with whom I was blessed to co-create on this project.

So I decided to show you. *smile*

The night was young, (the skies were clear,) the room was packed full of family and friends … and the band looked great (if I do say so myself) and sounded amazing!

The band – Steven Hobert (piano), me, Dean Magraw (guitar), Anthony Cox (bass) and Nathan Greer (drums)

During my vacation a week before the show, my family helped me figure out how to present my CDs at the show.

My CD “store”

Speaking of family … my brother and sister were there. (So were my parents. *smile*)

My brother Nate on drums

My sister came from Massachusetts with her husband and my niece. You may recall that I wrote a song – “If Only You Knew” – for my nieces and included it on the album. Singing that song to my niece in front of my siblings and parents was a special moment for me.

“I’m not crying; you’re crying!” (My sister with my niece)

Another highlight was a guest appearance by my sisters in song – the Give Get Sistet. They sang on the album and came to help me close out the first set.

with the Give Get Sistet (Mankwe Ndosi, Jayanthi Kyle & Alicia Steele)

Massive thanks to my family for ALL of their support and the efforts they made to travel and be there for my “really big shoe.” (Especially my mom who stayed up late – or was it early? *grin* – helping me package all those Kickstarter rewards.)

And a special thank you to my shutterbugs – family, friends and videographer Guy Wagner – without whom I would have no pictures of this event.

In November of last year, I learned that I received a grant award from the MN state arts board to write, record and release an album of original jazz songs. (Thanks, MSAB!)

In my proposal I said that “I want to sing jazz, and specifically jazz that I write in order to help broaden the definition of jazz vocals in the Twin Cities.” I had already written a couple of jazz tunes and believed I was ready for the challenge of composing an album’s worth of material.

I also knew that it would be an important growth project for me (that certainly has proved true!). Since beginning work on the project, I have worked with new musicians and performed more jazz gigs (both goals of mine). I have also had to dust off and update my transcribing and chart-writing skills.

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Now some people might approach writing an album by coming up with a theme for their project or a title for their CD, but I was pretty sure that if I tried either of those approaches I would never start writing. (If you’ve spent any time here, then you know that I am a far better finisher, than starter.) I also worried that having writing “assignments” might send me into a spiral of stuck and procrastination.

So I tried a bunch of other stuff.

• I signed up for online classes on songwriting and vocal development. And while it was helpful to have some external accountability (one of the classes had weekly check-in calls), I found a lot of the approaches to songwriting weren’t making much happen for me.For example, I tried looking at songs/jazz standards I really liked to figure out how they worked. What did I like about the melody or the chord progression? The instrumentation? The production? And while I truly think this was/is a good idea, I didn’t make a lot of progress with it.
• Writing titles for songs first did NOT work for me (at all).
• Thinking about types of songs was a little more useful. I felt like a jazz album should include some kind of blues and some kind of ballad. (Both of which have since manifested. *smile*)
• Next, I asked myself questions about the jazz songs (all two of them) that I had already written. In doing so, I realized with both songs their melodies arrived first, accompanied or followed very quickly by key words of the song.

Armed with the knowledge that melody and words worked for me (or at least it had two other times), I embarked on another 30 days of spontaneous songs. (Technically, it was 28 days because I did it for the month of February. *smile*)

(I sincerely thought about sharing that project with you here, Dear Reader, but I thought that adding the step of posting the improvs might keep me from creating them.)

After 28 days, I had a lot of ideas to explore. My commitment to myself was that I only had to record one 3-minute improvisation every day, but I frequently recorded two and sometimes three or four. I think this worked because I didn’t approach it as a songwriting activity, I revisited it as a creative/improv outlet.

As I had hoped, improvising every day got the music flowing. In fact, I woke up singing parts of the first verse of Maybe during that month.

Here’s my first “take” of the first verse

and here is a clip for a performance of Maybe six months later

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Sarah M. Greer is a fiscal year 2017 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

While April in Minneapolis is sometimes less than charming in terms of the weather, it’s always full of singing. And, it includes my birthday making it one of my very favorite months. *smile*

If a blog is like a journal or scrapbook, the here’s my entry for April 2015.

BLU-7 at the Nicollet, April 2015

I heard BLU-7 guitarist Jim Ouska sing his song “Halfway around the World” last summer and fell in love with it. I told him then and there that I wanted to sing it. When tasked with creating a set of contemporary tunes this spring, BLU-7 debuted our version of his haunting tune.

Halfway Around the World, BLU-7 (click the red triangle to play)

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Coloring Time at the Icehouse, April 2015

On the first Tuesday of the month, the improv collective Coloring Time takes the stage and serves up a night of invented music and spoken word. In April, I got to join them for a satisfying and soul-stirring evening.

I particularly liked this spontaneous composition about composing spontaneously.

It All Comes Out (excerpt), Coloring Time (click the red triangle to play)

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The Cast of Beauty and the Beast, Northeast Middle School

Oh how I wish I had an audio clip to share of the cast at Northeast soldiering on after we blew a fuse during the Thursday night performance! The lights came back on (thank heavens), but they performed the end of Be Our Guest (and the rest of the show) a cappella!

It was sight (and sound!) to behold; Bravo!

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Jay Young and the Lyric Factory at the Dakota, April 2015

I got to celebrate the conclusion of Beauty and the Beast at Northeast and my birthday at the Dakota with Jay Young and his Lyric Factory.

Happy Birthday (to me), Lyric Factory

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Give Get Sistet at Northern Voice Festival, April 2015

The Give Get Sistet and I traveled to our twin city St. Paul for the first annual Northern Voice Festival in April. With the help of our audience, we improvised a trip abroad.

Red London Dawn Improv,

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My latest collaboration is with my friend and mentor Anthony Cox. The quartet, called Riotus N, features Anthony on bass, John Penny on guitar, Davu Seru on drums with me on vocals.

More (excerpt), Riotus N