Rene Marie

I was born into a family of 9 in a very small town in Virginia.  Music played a pivotal role in my life from the very beginning.  It was at home that I learned the value of telling the story behind the music and how powerfully that story can move the listener and impact one's life.  I had one year of formal piano lessons when I was nine years old and another year when I was 13.  It was during those lessons that I learned to read music.  The rest of my musical ability seemed to come to me naturally.  For a brief time, as a teenager, I sang in a band at musical functions in my neighborhood.  In this band was a pianist, a sixteen-year-old boy who would later become my husband. I composed and sang my first piece in the band when I was 15.

At the age of 18 my boyfriend and I joined a very strict religious group, got married and stopped performing in public - for good, it seemed. Four years later, I was a mother of two sons and found myself inculcating in them a love for music the same way my father had with me – by example.  Many mornings I awakened them with Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man". Other times, we would 'dance' the story of Maurice Ravel's "Bolero". At night, I would compose lullabies for them, making up verses until they fell asleep.

In January 1996 I was 41 and working full-time at a bank when my oldest son convinced me to start singing again.  After a big family discussion, it was decided that I should call a family friend and ask to sing with his quintet.  He readily agreed and I started out singing one day a week in a smoky bar of a Ramada Inn for tips only.  It would be several months before I actually earned any money. However, by January 1997, my husband was displeased with the amount of time I was spending with music and told me to stop singing. I had promised him when I first started that if he ever wanted me to stop, I would.  So, I did.  I stopped singing for 3 months and they were a miserable 3 months. After months without singing in public, I begged, wheedled and cajoled my husband into "allowing" me to sing again. I promised him I would do whatever it took to "please" him, as long as I could sing. He capitulated and I resumed singing with a ferocity I didn't know I had. So much so that, on the last day of 1997, when this time he issued the ultimatum that I either stop singing or he would force me to leave our home, rather than stop singing, I chose to leave after 23 years of marriage.  18 months later, I had divorced my husband, produced my first CD, quit my job at the bank and signed onto the MaxJazz label. 

Between 2000 and 2004, I recorded four CDs on the MaxJazz label, Vertigo was selected as the best international jazz CD of 2002 by The Academie du Jazz (Paris, France) beating out Joni Mitchell and Cassandra Wilson, my next album Live at the Jazz Standard was on the top 20 of the Billboard jazz charts.  In 2005, I decided not to re-sign with MaxJazz, but to make my own way, call my own shots.  In 2006, I decided not to re-sign with my booking agent, but to slow things down and work on a one-woman show. In 2007, I released "Experiment In Truth"   The one woman show came to fruition in November 2009 called SLUT Energy Theory and has been getting great reviews in the Denver press where it premiered.

I have never forgotten the early lessons learned about the power of music. Today, I try to imbue that feeling of emotion into every song I write – every song I sing – every time.  I am very happy to be singing today.

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