Ashley Walker - Music Mavens: 15 Women of Note in the Industry

Copyright 2023 by Ashley Walker and Maureen Charles

All rights reserved.
Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-64160-726-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022943464

Cover design and illustrations: Sadie Teper
Interior design: Nord Compo

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

For music educators and choir directors everywhere,
those who taught us and those who teach others,
thank you for the music.

It always depends on one teacher.
Valrie Sainte-Agathe

Whether you like rock or pop or rap, country or classical or traditional, one things certainmusic has moved you. Groovy, up-tempo beats get you on your feet. The slow, sweet swing of a lullaby brings on sleep. And a love song deepens affection (when it isnt amplifying heartache).

Music has been doing these thingspumping people up, settling them down, and soothing lifes stingsfor a long time, ever since our early ancestors circled around firepits with drums and flutes.

Every known human culturethroughout the recorded past and around the modern worldhas enjoyed music. Whenever, wherever people come together, music is there too. For most of musics history, people did not think of themselves as either performers or listeners. Instead, music was communal, made and enjoyed by all. But today, many of the songs you hear are recorded in faraway places by artists who shine like distant stars on flat screens. Though you get glimpses of their lives in the media, the sense of distance remains.

In the following chapters, however, Music Mavens invites you back into the circleto sit down next to women of note in the industry.

These artists work across music genres, and they excel in a variety of roles, including composing and songwriting, performing and conducting, as well as audio engineering, producing, and even rock photography.

How did these women defy the odds? We interviewed all of them. And guess what? Few had musical families. No ones best friend owned a studio. Nobody lived next door to a talent scout.

The women in this book are music lovers just like you. Moved by the power of song, they wanted to move others. So, they studied, practiced, and mastered their craft.

Legendary performer Joanne Shenandoah described the drive to make music like this: You are transported yourself, therefore, you transport others.... Once youve done that and youve experienced it and you know it, you want to keep coming back.

Read on to learn how these artists turned their passion into platforms. See how they use their positions to uplift others. Most of all, enjoy the exclusive stories of music mavens who went from mere music lovers to women of note in the industry.

When Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical (based on the Disney animated film Ratatouille) began streaming on January 1, 2021, online viewers were treated to something rare. Every musician was female, and most were women of color. The Broadway Sinfonietta, the masterful orchestra that accompanied the musical, struck a chord with all who saw and heard it.

The Sinfoniettas founder, Macy Schmidt, watched the show from her Manhattan apartment. Ten years earlier she had entered high school unable to read music. Now, barely out of college, she had not only founded her own orchestra, but she had also written the orchestrations they were playing.

While Ratatouille streamed, Macys social media feeds blew up. People were filled with hope by the sight and sound of the Sinfonietta.

Los Angeles Times theater critic Ashley Lee tweeted, I have chills from this female, diverse #RatatouilleMusical orchestra.

I am LIVING for the orchestra, @ratatousical really did that for poc women. Inspiring, tweeted a college student named Tay.

Macy had started The Broadway Sinfonietta in response to inequities she had witnessed as a woman of color working in musical theater. Now, with Ratatouille, her activism had reached 350,000 strangers, and many were reaching back.

How had the 14-year-old who couldnt read music come so far by age 23?

Macy Schmidt was born in Los Angeles to an Egyptian couple who put her up for adoption at birth, then returned to Egypt.

Janet and David Schmidt, a white couple from Texas, quickly adopted baby Macy not because they had to but because they wanted to. Macy says she won the parent lottery with her mom and dad, whose deep parental bond is not a product of biology but of love. Personality-wise, anyone who knows us would tell you I am 50 percent my father and 50 percent my mother, she says. (Given her experience, it is not surprising that Macy, too, wants to adopt someday.)

The Schmidts remained in Texas until Macy was five. Then the trio moved to Florida, where they lived on the beach, two hours from Disney World, for three idyllic years.

The family returned to Texas when Macy started third grade. There, she attended an elite, private K12 school, where she received an excellent education but felt suffocated by all the rules. So, eight-year-old Macy often stepped out of line, hoping she would be expelled and returned to Florida freedom. That plan failed.

Fortunately, despite the rigorous environment, academics were never a problem for Macy, who recalls being very brainy... the kid who would win a competition where you see how many digits of pi you can memorize.

Macy also longed to learn piano, so at age 15, she taught herself to play songs from memory by watching videos online and copying what she saw. But she couldnt read music.

Then, in her sophomore year, Macy had an incredible choir teacher named Becky Martin. One day, Becky introduced the class to sight reading, and that first lesson in musical notation changed Macys life. She was suddenly struck by the relationship between the notes on the page and the sounds she produced. It was the coolest thing in the world.

Macy became obsessed with music theory and switched to videos that actually taught her to read piano music. For singing, she learned solfge, the use of sol-fa syllables (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do). She even sang pop songs in the shower replacing the lyrics with solfge. By her senior year, Macy had become so good at reading music that when she auditioned for the Texas All-State Womens Choir, she got a perfect score on her sight singing rounds, earning a coveted spot.