By Rob Hochschild
Berklee.edu Editor
June 2001

	Photo by Liz Linder
	Marianne's Audio • "Sometimes I'm Happy" (I. Ceasar, C. Grey, V. Youmans) Listen: slow | fast

Marianne Solivan and the stage have been lifelong partners. The jazz vocalist and youngest daughter of a Pentacostal preacher began singing in her father's church as a preschooler, took her first solo at the age of six, and has been a lead performer ever since.

"It helped me in a million different ways," she said of her early church performing. "It made me much more secure musically, and it taught me how much I need to prepare to feel secure. It also taught me how to make (being on stage) feel comfortable for myself. Now I can look out into an audience and think, 'this is happening and it's cool,' instead of being scared."

Not that Solivan hasn't encountered a challenge or two on stage. But with her childhood experience and several semesters as a Performance major at Berklee, she seems capable of surviving any problem that crops up. Solivan was presenting an important Berklee recital in February 2001 when she realized she had moved into the wrong key of a tune that she had begun with just her drummer.

"I don't know what happened, but the rest of the band was about to come in and I knew I was off," she said. "Then I gave them a second to play and I just jumped in on the right key. It all worked out beautifully and it sounded really hip on the recording."

An impressive recovery for a woman who says that she "didn't even know what swing was" when she played her first jazz gig during her freshman year at Berklee.

"I didn't know anything about anything," Solivan said, who began studying jazz by learning tunes and singing them exactly the same way the original performer did. That remained her approach until she encountered one of Berklee's veteran Voice Department teachers.

"I took a bunch of labs with Maggie Scott, and she definitely took me under her wing," Solivan said. "She was getting me into stopping being a copycat. She said, 'Start figuring out for yourself how to sing it.' She did a lot for me in the beginning."

Photo by Liz Linder
Marianne's Top Five: Tunes That Have Made Me a Better Singer • "Moody's Mood For Love" • "Sometimes I'm Happy" • "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home Too" • "I Remember You" • "End of a Love Affair"

Scott also pushed Solivan by giving her opportunities to sing in concerts featuring some of the college's strongest vocalists. "These girls were serious jazz singers," Solivan said. "It was a really great experience because I was like 'I've got to go practice and figure this stuff out because I don't know what I'm doing and I'm in the midst of all these people who really know what they're doing.'"

One of the keys to Solivan's development came when she put together a band and began playing gigs during her first semester at Berklee. With a group now composed of some of Berklee's strongest jazz players, the Marianne Solivan Jazz Quartet performs at a number of venues around Boston and has also played in San Francisco and abroad.

Time is a premium for Solivan, whose school and performing schedules keep her moving at a fast clip every day. Nevertheless, she also finds time to teach music for Zumix, a nonprofit organization in East Boston. She says her desire to help others extends from an altruistic childhood that included four years of missionary work in Venezuela and helping her mother direct church youth choruses.

"We were always involved in community-type organizations and helping people out in one way or another," Solivan said. "I think that definitely has shaped a little bit of who I am and how I am."

It also likely played a role in Solivan's decision to pursue Music Education, which was her sole field of study before adding Performance as a second major. When asked about her Music Education teachers, Solivan raves, describing them as "just really wonderful people."

"It's great. I love it," she says about her studies in Music Education. "It's a big huge load and it's hard as hell, but it's cool. I totally dig it."

Solivan hopes to teach music after she graduates at a high school or middle school while maintaining a performing career on the side.

"The big thing is whatever you do, just be happy," Solivan says. "I don't care if I'm poor. That's why I do the music I do. It just makes me happy."

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