In 1975, my mom Janet Perryman and brother Neal F. Perryman came up with the slogan “you’ve come a long way for Riverside, Illinois bicentennial. I can definitely relate to their sentiment with regard to my journey as a singer.

Below is a clip of my dad and I singing duets a decade apart; 1991 after undergrad, and 2001, 5 months before he passed away. Today I was describing the long singing road I have faced to my voice student. Over the years, I have been challenged with cracking, pushing, spreading, range issues, compression challenges, and breathiness etc. In the 1991 clip, I had a robust head voice that eclipsed my lack of Italian vowels and imbalanced baby dramatic soprano registers. Singing my big girl rep by mid 1990s would force me to figure out how to sing with my voice. By the 2001 clip after a rebuild with my Chicago teacher and my voice/alexander teacher Patricia O’Neill at LSU, growth has come. Since then, I continue to find more compression ease, release, language, artistry from my Mannes work with Ruth Falcon and Anthony Manoli and beyond with Giovanni Longo. The 2nd clip is my “Du Bist” from last fall’s walkure act 1 with Lou Kosma and Green Mountain Mahler Festival. The first and last clip are 32 years apart in my singing life.