Music & Me
I've been making music all my life; I started taking piano lessons when I was 5.
I also studied harp (imagine, if you will, a 6 year old girl playing a full-sized harp!) and as a teenager, I taught myself to play the guitar. I always sang; I loved to sing. And write songs. I grew up listening to Tchaikovsky, The Beatles, Count Basie, James Taylor, Smokey Robinson; I was influenced as a songwriter by Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. And I wanted to sing like Aretha Franklin.
Liz started performing her own material in coffeehouses and graduated to singing with local bands in clubs. One of the best known of those bands was The Bug Alley Band. She also sang with White Kids (with Sas Harris) in various clubs around Montréal & began singing jingles and teaching singing. With the vocal quartet General Jive, she sang at Le Festival Internationale de Jazz de Montréal.
In 1988 with the band United Press, Liz won the Yamaha Battle of the Bands and went to Tokyo to compete in The World Final Band Explosion. In 1994 with Another Life, she opened for The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, at Toronto's Hummingbird Centre. "It was incredible to stand at the side of the stage and watch & listen to my idol, Aretha. How fortunate was I!"
In 1992, Liz was asked to participate in Canada's 125th birthday celebration; on Parliament Hill, in front of The Queen of England and thousands of other people, she sang a line from our national anthem, en français, along with other Canadian luminaries such as Gino Vanelli and Randy Bachman. There was a TV special, "With Glowing Hearts" on CTV that documented the event.
In 1995, Liz went to entertain the Canadian UN Peacekeepers in Croatia and Bosnia during the on-going civil war. “This was an amazing experience - the troops were so appreciative & we were treated like royalty”.
Liz has travelled to Japan, France, The British Isles, through the States and across Canada....”Ireland felt like home to me; there’s even a well-known flute player named Seamus Tansey from County Sligo! But I still haven’t been to half the places in the world I want to visit."
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