There's a party coming to the Eastern Shore. Can you feel it? It wants you to put on your dancing shoes and shake it! And one musician is making it happen.
You're listening to Off the Record with Stephen Philip Harvey. Where we sit down and talk to a variety of musicians on today's music scene. Today we're sitting down with Paula Atherton ahead of her March 20th performance at the room at Cedar Grove in Lewes, Delaware.
She's a multihyphenate musician, working mostly in the smooth jazz genre. Being both an instrumentalist and a singer could be a lot to balance. She recounts how she found her way to her sound through study.
So in my teens I started to study jazz and, you know, study all the masters. And I studied with Bob Mintzer, Lee Konitz, Jim McNeely…I have a straight head jazz background, so I spent years first singing along solos, transcribing them, picking them apart, taking out, you know, a Charlie Parker riff, playing it in every key… doing the work. I still try to practice that way, try to find things like that to just keep opening up the channels of improvisation.
I had started singing earlier. I was always in chorus in school. And I could always hit the really high notes, so they liked me. Chorus, they gave me the first soprano all the time.
This balance also carries itself over to the writing and producing of her life, where she approaches creating music in a multifaceted manner, being songwriting and collaboration.
I mean, as far as writing for any of those mediums, it just depends on how an idea comes to you and you never know how it's gonna come. Maybe an idea about a story about something that would be a vocal. Some kind of a riff that I'm practicing that I hear that could be an instrumental song that I put together or a chord sequence. You know, we're thankful wherever the ideas come from… We don't ask, we just say thank you and, and try to go and try to go with whatever we got.
You know, when I work with Greg, a lot of times he'll come up with a groove or something and then we'll both co-write over it. And that's kind of like the type of song I've worked to radio, Funky stuff. Mostly uptempo
Live performance can often venture from artists' most recognized work with singles just being one snippet of their sound. It's an interesting juxtaposition when included in the same set of this multifaceted performer.
Well, it's my first time there, so hope everybody comes. We have a great program for you guys. It's gonna be a 90-minute show and I don't really work a lot of my flute and vocal singles to radio, so I always do a mixed program where I'm gonna be playing. Of course, a couple of my number ones. And then a variety across my seven albums. And of course, I'm gonna include some vocal and flute tunes. So hopefully the variety is interesting to the listener.
This was Off the Record, hosted by me, Stephen Philip Harvey, a Delmarva Public Media production. For more information on Paula Atherton and her performance at the room at Cedar Grove, visit theroomatcedargrove.com. To hear more Off the Record interviews like this or to listen to other original segments, visit delmarvapublicmedia.org.
