At long last: Marien
Local teacher/singer Lisa Marien performs Saturday in the Garde Oasis Room
Singer Lisa Marien would have gotten around to recording her debut album a lot sooner, but she has her priorities. She's hyper-focused on her "kiddos" — hundreds of them.
In addition to her own three children, Marien teaches music, world drumming, choral and a cappella students, currently at Nathan Hale Arts Magnet School in New London and, before that, at Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School in New London, Wildwood Christian School and in the Norwich Public Schools system.
"Teaching is totally my world," says Marien, seated behind her desk in an expansive music classroom at Nathan Hale on a pretty autumn day. "It's my heart, soul, mind and body. My philosophy has been that I'll sing when the opportunity arises."
It has arisen. Marien is in the middle of a casually paced but committed 10-song project of mostly jazz standards with a few pop and R&B tunes thrown it. Working with renowned pianist/arranger John DiMartino, and with coaching help from Take 6 tenor Brian McKnight, Marien is inching closer to the finish line on the self-financed project.
To that end, on Saturday in the Oasis Room at the Garde Arts Center, Marien performs a concert designed to help finance the next round of studio sessions. Joining her onstage will be di Martino, bassist Mark Poniatowski, drummer Randy Cloutier and her husband, saxophonist Steve Marien. A reception follows the show.
Marien's attitude towards life and music is the essence of the "it's all good" mantra currently popular in the cultural lexicon. It's abundantly clear, during a casual school-wide tour of Hale's world-class artistic facilities — featuring her enthusiastic commentary — that Marien couldn't be happier in her job. But it's also true that she is an incredibly gifted vocalist and interpreter. Her threeplus-decade career as an educator is only predated by the time she spent, right out of college, as a professional singer in night club Top 40 bands. But those were grueling and demanding four-hour gigs of multiple sets, requiring Marien to consistently replicate the throat-shredding vocals of folks like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.
"Frankly, while I have some range, the tone and quality of my voice is the opposite of someone like Whitney Houston," says Marien, who grew up in Hope Valley, R.I., majored in music education at the University of Rhode Island, and earned a masters in world music at Wesleyan. "But, every night, I had to hit those notes and sound like those singers if I wanted to work. Plus, I'd started teaching and was a church musician, and (in 1994) I literally blew my voice out. It wasn't one of those scratchy, hoarse situations where it gets better. It was GONE."
It turns out the stress resulted in a vocal hemorrhage. Even with treatment and therapy, Marien was instructed not to perform for a year and, even then, she lost some of her higher-end range. "Basically, I thought I was done," she says.
She devoted herself to teaching and to raising a family. In terms of her own singing and the professional side of musical performance, she'd pretty much been involved in a "sidelines" sort of fashion, occasionally sitting in with friends at clubs or helping out with arranging and producing on others' recording projects.
In a very gradual fashion, however, fate and circumstances have led to the current recording project. With her husband's Steve Marien Ensemble, she began performing jazz standards in public again. Marien also sang wonderfully received tributes to one of her heroes, Sarah Vaughan, as part of the Miss Lottie's Café series at the Donald Oat Theater in Norwich. She does occasional gigs at the Steak Loft and will tentatively perform with the New London Big Band at the Social during one of their Wednesday night residency shows.
Fate also intervened with another of Marien's musical idols, the hit a cappella group Take 6. Describing her affection for the act as "I'm an the ultimate fan girl; I'll go see them anywhere, at any time," Marien won a contest to actually sing onstage with Take 6 — and it happened last October at the Garde.
"It was unsettling, in a marvelous sort of way," Marien says of meeting Take 6 at the sound check before the gig. "All I could think of was that I'd been in countless autograph lines at their shows, and now I was going to meet them and then sing with them."
That she was greeted "like I was family," with big hugs and a rehearsal in which the group's kindness and advice put her at ease, made the experience all the more special. Marien is still a bit critical of her performance that night, but it clearly resonated with Take 6, particularly tenor/founder Claude McKnight — who has become her vocal coach and psychological cheerleader during
the recording process.
Too, pianist/arranger DiMartino, whom Marien met when he performed a show at the Oasis Room, has been a huge help. DiMartino has worked with luminaries such as David "Fat Head" Newman, Pat Martino, Taj Mahal, Keelie Smith, Billy Eckstine and Freddie Cole.
"I'm not sure what John heard in my voice, but he told me I had something and he wanted to work with me," Marien says. "They've both become something I treasure: friends."
While Marien's original idea was to record an album's worth of Vaughan standards, rehearsals with both DiMartion and McKnight convinced her to reassess. In addition to distinct and often Latin-flavored versions of time-honored songs like "Shadow of Your Smile" and "When Sunny Gets Blue," Marien is also working on takes of material by Stevie Wonder and Michael McDonald.
"The goal is that next summer we'd have maybe a 12-song album ready to go," Marien says. "We'll see how Saturday's event goes. If it sells out, we'll go back in the studio. There are a lot of vocals left to do, and I want Steve to do some sax solos. One way or another, it'll happen. I've learned that much."