I was born in New York City and spent most of my childhood in a Hudson valley village called Nyack, surrounded by cheap antiques and talented artists and musicians. Being close to the city, I was blessed to see all the great Broadway shows of the 70s and 80s. When I was a teenager, my father bought a house upstate, just outside of Woodstock. I spent my first college summer interning for Bearsville Studios in the legendary Albert Grossman days. The following summer I interned for Todd Rundgren, working as the art department P.A. on the feature-length video version of "The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect."

In those years I spent all my time singing; incredible musicians like Artie and Happy Traum, Eric Anderson, John Sebastian, Dave Sanborn and the legendary ethnomusicologist Joe Hickerson were kind to me and inspired me greatly. Some, like John Heminger and Paul Butterfield, are no longer with us, and I learned from them, too. I went to high school in Colorado and started college as a voice major in Wisconsin, performing Gilbert and Sullivan by day and playing with locals by night. I was in a folk-rock girl duo, followed by a jazz-rock band during my year abroad in England (our claim to fame was opening for Echo and the Bunnymen – once) and for years I sang here in LA with Karl Maruyama, which brought me into contact with a host of amazing musicians, many of whom have gone on to fame or greatness or both.

In the mid-eighties, my grandmother introduced me to the music of Michael Feinstein, and it was pure magic for me. I was living in Hollywood, performing in micro-budget independent films and struggling as a writer, and the old standards seemed a world away. It was an unlikely enchantment, and I realized even then that what touched me was not so much the genre of the music, but the purity of the songs themselves and the quality of the writing. I love all American roots music--whether it be folk or the most classic of standards. When I first heard Feinstein sing from the American songbook, the songs I’d first learned at my grandparents’ parties came rushing back to me, and I vowed that one day I would sing them, too.

In the end, I spent many years writing and thinking about music, but not performing it. As an audiobook editor, I worked with the late Danny Sugarman, the darling Pamela Des Barres, legendary showgirl Abbe Lane and Motown founder Berry Gordy. I won a film festival award for a screenplay about Ignatius Sancho, the world’s first Afro-British composer. I even got to play the tragic 19th c. figure, Minnie Dean, in a music video for the wonderful New Zealand singer-songwriter, Helen Henderson.

Finally, after much procrastination, I walked into Peisha McPhee’s classroom and started to sing again. Peisha opened up a whole new world to me. That summer, as a student, I found myself standing onstage with the great Marcovicci and other amazing performers at Perry-Mansfield in Colorado, and a few years after that, I made my professional debut on the cabaret circuit. I have been blessed to have worked with some of the best in the business, and I am forever grateful for the opportunities that have come my way.

Hope to see you at the next show!

Nicole Dillenberg