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.

This will be the ninth time I have picked a keyword for the year. I began choosing keywords back in 2009 and I have come to rely on this process as an invitation to review the past year and ponder and dream about the year ahead. Focusing on choosing a word allows me to “plan” in a more high-level, dreamy way (rather than a detailed, list-making, this needs to happen first way).

As we know, I am a thinker and I can get stuck in the details of an undertaking. And I admit that I have been a little stuck in the process of picking a word for 2017. Looking back at my words, it seems I have more trouble picking a word when I know I have a large goal or project on the horizon. This year was no exception.

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In November, I learned that I earned the opportunity to write and record an album this year. (Thank you, state arts board!) Since I couldn’t start work on the project until January, however, I was able to daydream about the project for the rest of 2016. And, it was kind of fun to think about how I would approach the project and the songwriting methods I would get to try, the musicians with whom I might collaborate and the songs I would write.

That changed new year’s day. It was like an alarm went off and I had overslept; I felt instantly behind. My friend and Sistet member Aimee said to me, “Panic is part of the process.” (She’s right and I’m thinking about having t-shirts made. *wink*). I could tell this panic was affecting my keyword candidates for 2017. My list filled up with goal-oriented, action words – clarity, skill, artistic, act, decide, etc. In other words, things I should do or become.

But in nine years, I have learned that the keyword can’t feel like an assignment. It has to guide, not push and I don’t necessarily have to know how the word is going to work.

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Take last year’s word — HEART — for example. I still cannot articulate exactly why I picked it, but, as frequently happens, heart kept turning up. Often, literally, as in February when my grandmother had a heart attack; in April, when a co-worker’s husband died from an aortic rupture and my grandmother also died; and in October when another friend’s father died from post surgery, heart-related issues.

I also felt HEART guiding me as I worked on my album funding proposal and as I processed the events before and after November’s election. Finally, working with HEART, I realized once again that I had to get out of my head about this year’s word.

2017 will be a year for growth, possibly even unruly and unpredictable growth. And while that may fill me with some nervous energy, I’m going to try to learn from and revel in it.

My keyword for 2017 is FLOURISH.

flourish v. — to be in a vigorous state; to grow luxuriantly, or thrive in growth; to sound a trumpet call or fanfare; a condition or period of thriving

Over the past few years, I have learned that my summer schedule is a bit more flexible than the rest of the “school year” – making it a great time to spend more time music-making.

And, not just performing, but practicing and studying.

In the last few weeks, I have gone down the Internet rabbit hole looking for vocal exercises and techniques to improve my students’ and my own singing, I have added (even more!) jazz tunes to my repertoire (including work on some of my own compositions) and I did a deep dive into my scat singing methods and practice (all in good time for last month’s SCAT OFF during the Twin Cities annual jazz festival).

Over the 4th, I traveled to Wisconsin to see my brother play a reunion show with musicians he’s known for over 20 years. In the 90s, Black Poet’s Society recorded some songs and became the go-to local act to open for national rappers who came through Madison. Watching my brother play with them reaffirmed that music is all about relationships. It was significant to see the relationships between them and to watch eight black men create in a space together and speak to the experience of being black men in the U.S. right now.

Black Poet’s Society. Photo by Hedi LaMarr.

I also got to spend a bit of time with my mentor and friend Rhiannon, who happened to be in Middleton for the 41st annual National Women’s Music Festival. Since Rhiannon now lives in Hawaii (when she’s not globetrotting to perform and teach), it’s been a number of years since we’ve been in a room together.

I sat in on one of her workshops and it was like a breath of fresh air and your favorite slippers all rolled together. The session was short and the participants had a range of experience singing (from none to other professionals like me), but the ground we covered was vast.

Listening to Rhiannon talk about the why of vocal improvisation was inspiring and rejuvenating. She talked about singing for the planet and for the many kinds of pain it seems that the world is in. At one point in speaking about improvising with the voice, she said, “This way of singing is really about self love.”

I agree. To improvise requires that you fundamentally believe and trust that what you have to sing has value and is worth sharing. Learning to sing is about more than breath support or vowel production or any of the things that go in to good technique.

It is about finding your voice and giving and expressing from that place within you that sings.