Spotlight On: Colleen Orender
Nashville-based vocalist Colleen Orender will be performing at Rudy’s Jazz Room on January 24th, 2024 at 9PM. Ahead of her performance, she answered a few questions for Nashville Women in Jazz.
Visit her website at www.colleenorender.com or purchase tickets to her show by clicking here.
NWIJ: Can you tell us some about your musical background—were there specific role models or albums that cemented your love for music?
CO: I started singing with my Paw Paw when I was an infant. He was a country singer, and I started memorizing the Dolly Parton and Patsy Cline records he brought to me when I was about five years old. He told me if I wanted to be good I needed to sound like “that” so I think that was when I started practicing and trying to match the tone I heard.
NWIJ: Did you have formal music training? Were there any notable teachers who inspired or influenced you?
CO: I started playing piano when I was five, but I had a strong ear and honestly I leaned on that for most of my recitals, but I picked up a little bit of theory from those first years. I never had vocal training until I went to college as a musical theatre major. Growing up in my Paw Paws band, singing with Dolly records, singing in church, and listening to records was about it. I was cast in musicals from an early age, and I picked up a few tricks from the Music Directors in those shows along the way, so that was really my only formal knowledge. I knew harmony naturally and was performing regularly in competitions all over Florida.
NWIJ: How does jazz factor into the music you write and perform?
CO: My Great Grandmother was a Big Band singer and my Grandmother listened to swing, but I think the first time I heard jazz voices was from Musical Scores in musicals or soundtracks in movies and I really delved into loads of jazz records as a teen. When I found Josephine Baker, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn I fell in love with the interpretations of the voices and lyrics from the 20’s-40’s and I realized how the voice could be used as a true instrument in a song.
NWIJ: Who are some of your vocal influences or heroes?
CO: I’d say the style I sing has been influenced by an amalgamation of soul, jazz, pop, and country artists like Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, Nina Simone, Patsy Cline, Elvis, Ella, Gloria Estefan and many more.
NWIJ: How do you approach performance?
CO: I feel the energy exchange consistently through out a performance and lean into every drop. Telling a story is the most important thing to me and listening and pushing on the tension in the music between my musicians and my voice. We all work together and provide space.
NWIJ: What is your approach as a songwriter?
CO: I write with my voice and then get with my producer or another musicians and I write about what I hear and what I see in my daily life. Relationships, friends experiences in their relationships. I’m always receiving information around me and the muse is awake. Songs wake me up in my sleep often and I always keep my recorder close by.
NWIJ: How do you deal with disappointment, “failure”, or setbacks as a musician?
CO: You have to be a little crazy and a maniacal dreamer to even want to deal with the music business. Performance and sharing energy with an audience is like breathing to me, so I don’t really think about the down times. As long as I’m still handling the business emails and working toward new connections throughout the day I feel like goals are being met. Nothing in life is forever, all gigs must end and my theatre auditioning background made me durable against the word “no”. It’s just part of what I do.
NWIJ: What’s one of your favorite gigs you’ve done?
CO: One of the funnest was singing on the Tennis Channel for the Parabis Open to salute the local Marines. Five marines carried me to my position for fun and got to hang with Huey Lewis and the News and REO Speedwagon after that show.
NWIJ: What advice would you give to a young person who’s interested in pursuing a career in music?
CO: You have to be a mad dog about your dreams. No agent, manager, or perfect situation is coming to save you. It’s not the movies. It is all about hard work, and time seperates the doers from the talkers. No one ever booked a tour for me, made me sing for hours when I was a kid, moved me to Nashville to become a recording artist. I had to do it without blinking, and it doesn’t happen all at once. A million little different pieces of hard work and relationships come together to make an artist successful, and sometimes it takes decades to get there.
