When did you realize that having a career in the arts was your path?
"In 1978 when I was sitting on top of a mountain in Hawaii after I graduated from Evergreen State College, and before I went to Cornish College of the Arts; I knew I was going to have to make a living, that life didn't just come to you because you throw the I Ching. So I decided to sail a boat across the ocean to get home, and if I could sail a boat over the sea, I could get on a stage without fear. Just to backtrack for a second, I was a singer in choirs in New York even as a teenager, but I really never once thought about singing or the arts as a profession. I was athletic and a science geek and all I wanted to do was to live my life by the sea or on the sea, scuba diving, so I went to college for Oceanography. In college I switched majors, but even then I didn’t take music seriously as a profession. I didn't dabble, I really trained: studying voice in NYC with this amazing 86-year-old Russian Opera singer named Mme. Olga Ryss--she was a real grande Dame. She herself made her Opera debut in 1917 in St. Petersburg, Russia at age 17 under the baton of Prokofiev! Imagine that, my teacher’s teacher was Prokofiev. That’s some lineage. She was an amazing woman. Her name was Olga Golda Goodman, I believe when first singing. She fled Bolshevik Russia as a Jew and as an artist. She really fled. Echoes of Yes, Anastasia. She went to Germany, sang at the pre-war Berlin Opera House, then fled Nazi Germany in the 1940’s, and the Nazi’s burned all her opera recordings. She went to South Africa. She left SA in the 1970’s for New York City when SA was dangerous. That’s when i met her. What a woman. Brave as they come.
"I also took composition at Juilliard. But I was, in some ways, both curious and also just trying to get through college because college MADE me focus and allowed me time. I began the dream in 1976 with Mme Ryss, and also then studied with her at the Aspen Music Festival where I intermittently sang, then bicycled or hiked in the mountains. I was really avoiding any concept of city life or a job path, to be honest. It was a creative fantasy. No one in my family did music professionally, that I knew of, although my grandfather was a singer. Not until I hit the real world and realized I did not want to be in the real world did I look at my arts as a life choice. Deciding where you want to be, then creating a career are two entirely different problems to solve. After that jaunt to Hawaii, I did some advanced vocal training at Cornish College of the Arts, which was a really supportive place. Then I went to New York again, and finally to L.A. I got into the unions as a result of the vocal recordings I did with George Duke, a legendary Jazz genius, who loved what I did with voices. For me, after getting my AFTRA and SAG union cards in 1986, I knew I could find ways to create and also be paid to create.
"Applying my classical background into a contemporary medium, and getting my union cards, this showed me I could keep going. In the 1980’s, whether it was NYC with Equity, or LA with AFTRA and SAG, the union card meant you were worth being paid. So then I knew, and then I never worked for free after that--except for my own art, or for charity. Now that might sound mercenary, because nowadays, many great young independent artists barely get paid, since everyone shares files, but in my day there was a lot of paid work. Very creative work, so it meant something to me and then I knew I could do it. I have never done anything else. Lean times or good times. It's all I chose to do and if it’s what I am meant to do, I have to live through the lean times and trust, and listen, and prepare for the next opportunity."
-Marta Woodhull, 20YATP Featured Artist
