TJBS: When did teaching come into the equation?

You know, I have run from teaching for almost 15 years, because all of my older siblings are teachers, and it’s like, baby girl saying “I’m not going to do what you guys did, I’m going to do something different.” A little more than 10 years ago I had an opportunity to teach some 6th and 7th graders music, and discovered that I was absolutely awful, but I was having a fabulous time. And so I just started working at getting better. Actually I am a good teacher, but I had to discover that I am a good teacher for people over the age of 15, by and large. I think my style tends to be a little too wordy and too heady for most kids to absorb well. But it was that experience that made me go -- “you know, I really liked that. I was awful, but I liked that.” So I’ve been pursuing it ever since.

TJBS: You have a workshop that you present, “Working Artists in the Real World.” What gave you the idea for that?

Well, again, it was when I was on the General Jackson. I did the dinner set downstairs regularly, developing a real strong sense of rapport with the audience, and there were some dancers in the show who wanted to -- because everybody was being required to go do the dinner announcements -- stand out on stage and say, “Good evening, welcome aboard, how are you, who’s having a birthday?” That was actually very uncomfortable for them and they asked me if I would teach them how to do that. They knew they were going to have to try to do that, and were frustrated at the fact that it didn’t come naturally to them.

So I asked, if I teach a workshop in it would you all come, and they said yes. And that’s really how it started. When I was going through some files the other night I found that initial workshop. We just did an all-day workshop, working on presentation. I came back home and re-worked the language of it, because Sandra Dudley had me come in -- she had a guest-artist-come-into the classroom-kind-of-thing. The questions that the students asked me, and these were juniors and seniors, really made it clear to me that a whole picture of how to be a working artist in the real world -- you get a diploma and you leave those walls, what do you do? Those were the questions I was getting, and it made it a little obvious to me that there was a need for that kind of information -- the whole picture was missing for these students, so I thought, huh, let me see what I can offer.

I started trying to write it down, the essential elements, pulling them out into a presentation format that would hopefully be general enough to apply to almost everybody, and then specific enough in its master class format that an actor would get to do something in that class, and a musician would get to do something in that class.

TJBS: How did Jazz Rhapsody come about?

Jazz Rhapsody came about because I officially became an orphan in 1999 -- my mom died. I had been asking her before that to give me some of the family genealogy. My maternal grandmother was the youngest of 14, and very little information had been given out over the years, even though there’s this clan of people that I know but I don’t know anything about them. So I started asking about the genealogy and then she passed away in 1999. It was right before or right after, I can’t remember, “Turn My Heart,” my first album. For some reason, although I liked that experience it did not seem enough of a tribute to my parents. It did not seem big enough to me to leave behind as evidence of what they had given to me.

So there’s that -- that’s on one side. Then there’s an actor friend of mine who I’ve worked with for many years, who’s done his own show for many years, does a lot of the college circuit stuff and also the jazz thing. He looked at me one day and said, “you know, you really could be doing your own show.” The concept of show and jazz gig all depends on the patter in between.So I gave it some serious thought, and thought OK, if I was going to put my own show together, what would I be saying, what would I be doing? I like my jazz thing, it’s going really well, it’s developing an audience. I love the theater, but it’s exhausting. What am I going to do? And I thought “how about jazz theater?” Oh . . . ok. And when I started thinking about it, what do I want to say to an audience, standing onstage by myself, with no actor support -- no other bodies supporting me? What is it that I can say to an audience that would be meaningful? And that’s where Jazz Rhapsody came out. Originally it started out with me doing a lot of research and what ended up being a 75-page report on the Harlem Renaissance. I went back and read it and went, “OK, that’s a 75-page report, no that’s not going to work.” And I said well, the only story I can tell is my own. Other than the story of -- 60 or 70 years of jazz and jazz musicians. I don’t have time for that -- I mean Ken Burns was 19 hours -- we’re talking about 90 minutes. What can I say? And I came up with a general overview of jazz history and its impact on my life.

TJBS: You’re also doing some work with the Modern Jazz Tuba Project

Oh yeah! I’m their featured vocalist. They are -- If you haven’t sung with 10 horns blowing behind you, you don’t really know what power feels like -- or powerlessnes, depending on which side of the fence you’re on. Joe Murphy plays bass with me, and also plays tuba and bass in Jazz Rhapsody. He and Winston Morris co-direct the Modern Jazz Tuba Project. He asked me if I would sing with them periodically when they have gigs and have an opportunity to feature a vocalist. Like in making their album they thought 45 minutes of tuba is too much for any human to take -- maybe we ought to break it up with a vocalist -- so, they got me to record a couple of songs. I love working with them. We’ve got a rhythm section -- piano, bass, drums, guitar, and 9 or 10 tubas. I don’t get to sing with them as often as I’d like, but I’m their girl when they got room for one.

TJBS: You and your band [had] a performance coming up at the Nashville Jazz Workshop coming up. What should the listener expect?

For people who haven’t experienced me from the stage perspective -- a lot of people say that I’m enigmatic, that I have a strong capacity to hold an audience’s attention. Musically I try to cover a wide range. I just told somebody the other day, the pop people in town call me a jazz singer and the true jazzheads in town think I’m a pop singer, so I just like to float the middle. I don’t fully like to define myself [as a jazz singer] because then when I pull out some Al Jarreau, your typical I-don’t-go-past-Miles-Davis jazzhead is going to be insulted.

I grew up with Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughn, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Elton John, Steely Dan, so I’ve got a fondness for a backbeat and swing, and I don’t ever want to abandon either one of them for the other. In my personal taste I’ll try to mix them together.

TJBS: That leads to an interesting question -- people define being a jazz singer in so many different ways -- what would your definition be?

For me a jazz singer -- I don’t care whether you can scat or not. That does not make you a jazz singer in my mind. For a lot of people when you say jazz they immediately think scatting and they start to do it, poorly, but they think that all of a sudden it makes them a jazz singer because they’re able to syllable-ize. That doesn’t define jazz to me. Jazz to me is about the freedom of the music as opposed to the locked-down definition of the music as set by Cole Porter & Gershwin. As we all know they were actually popular composers. They were not actually jazz composers -- it was the jazz singers that made their music jazz music because they were singing in the jazz style. For me it’s about feel, it’s about phrasing, it’s about the ability to hear and to improvise in the moment -- it doesn’t have to be off the page. To me, you’ve got a lot of jazz singers who have no clue what the melody is. I think all songwriters write a melody because it has a specific purpose for them. Interpretation -- that’s the word I’m looking for. For me as a jazz singer it ends up really being about interpretation and how personal can you get with your interpretation of a song so that everybody in the audience, by the time the night is over, has felt something specially directed at them because of your ability to interpret it, not because of your ability to do gymnastics with it.

TJBS: Talk a little about your classes at the Jazz Workshop -- those are a little different than your Working Artist Workshops

The classes at the Jazz Workshop are fabulous -- because I always leave feeling really pumped. I took a very individualistic approach as an instructor which makes me unique in a lot of ways and also gets me in trouble in a lot of ways. I’m looking for who you are, because as a performer it’s not possible to be someone you are not, unless you are a consummate actor.

In the performance classes at the Jazz Workshop it’s my job not only to discover something that is unique in every student and try to manifest that in their performance in a positive way, but to also find out what that student is actually capable of. What I think I see and what the student is actually able to do may be far removed from each other. So, I try to keep it loose, and keep it honest. I try and tell everybody the first day of class, I’m not here to be nice, I’m here to be honest. I’m here to make you look and sound better, so let’s go.

We try to have a good time, I try to laugh a lot, but it really becomes about the student’s dedication to the work and the music that they want to sing. So we take a handful of songs, 6-10 songs that the students are either strongly familiar with, or highly proficient with, and turn those songs into a performance, with confidence onstage. This includes knowing where the mike should go if you’re taking it off the stand, knowing how to acknowledge the band, knowing how to count off the band, knowing how not to treat the band, knowing what looks odd on your body, knowing what your body’s doing, when you are and are not making contact with the audience, and what you’re doing that may feel good to you but actually is disturbing to me as an audience member.

When we can, it gets into artist development -- it’s the very beginnings of artist development -- for a jazz artist anyway. These days artist development means you have to take dance classes with Janet Jackson, and we’re not doing that! (laughs) But, there is an element that I have found very interesting, and that is -- about the use of rhythm in the body in public. You know, most of us have come up through going to the dance, whether the prom, or the church social, or whatever. We come up going to the dance. Then one day you decide that you want to be a performer of jazz music and you get onstage with your songs and either your body translates them or it doesn’t. And so I am finding that I’m having to find ways to get people to let the music flow through their bodies in a way that for some reason suddenly gets stifled because we’re talking about jazz. So suddenly the shirt collar comes in and the nose goes up and it gets a little siff on occasion. So I try to loosen to it up again.

For me it’s about interpretation and audience response, and if I’m not touching my audience there’s no reason for me to be up there, and that’s the real thing for me as a teacher, is try to get the students to touch their audiences and let their audience touch them, and that’s a very personal space, so it’s been a rather personal class from time to time. I have to tell people, that doesn’t look good on you, did you know that you’re doing that with your arm? that thing you’ve got going on with your left foot, we gotta work on that. So it ends up being very personal. Stand up, please stand up straighter, suck in your gut. Something not everybody can take, but if you’re trying to be on stage, then you’ve really got to understand what’s up there. Then again, that’s a throwback to the very first Working Artists Workshop with the dancers wanting to do that thing onstage and being petrified.

TJBS: I’m an instrumentalist -- nobody talks to me about these things -- should I be worried about them?

Only if you’re trying to be a frontman. Once you come out front you take on a whole different air from the audience’s perspective than if you’re just a sideman. Somebody might really enjoy the fact that you’ve got your head down and what it is you’re picking and the fact that you’re not paying them any attention and are really into your playing, but you’re not a frontman. They look at the frontman and the frontman’s got to be drawing them in -- otherwise they get anxious -- who’s driving this train? And I tell them that if you’re out front you’re driving it, even if you’re not. It appears to us that you are. If you don’t want to count the tune off, give it to the band. It still looks like you’re in charge, because what’s happening is you’re smiling and the drummer’s going on and you’re going, bam, and it’s all in synch. As opposed to “am I counting this off?” But I really like teaching. I like it because it really gives me a chance to be not in the spotlight, and to try to pull some nuances out of people who I don’t know that well, and I find that a very interesting challenge.

You can catch Connye Florance and her band at the Nine48jazz House Concert Series Sunday, December 18 (details at the top of this article). For more information about Connye, you can visit her website, www.connyeflorance.com.