I met Ann in the Spring of 2006. I’d been in NY for a few months and was introduced to Ann through word of mouth.
She is an incredible force. I am grateful for the day that I met Ann, because she’s had a huge impact on me, both musically and personally. I have taken music classes before, but they were so theoretical. With Ann, it’s about hands-on and applied knowledge, and this is exactly what I needed. She’s all about having the skill set you need, the musicianship, to be useful. The whole point of her classes is to talk about music, but it bleeds into your personal life as well, in terms of being a valuable person and making a contribution to the world at large. She has had a huge positive impact on me, even through what has been a “kick in the pants.”

When I moved to NY, I was a Southern girl. Ann very quickly made me realize that, in New York, I was surrounded by a group of people who were just as talented as I am.  It wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to hear.

With Ann, it’s all about the process.  It’s about recognizing that there is a journey, not about arriving. One of the things about music is that it’s never completed.  It’s constantly evolving. There’s always more that you can do, more that you can express.  She has gotten me to step back and assess what I am doing and why I am doing it. She’s helped me to become a better piano player, to try to quit riding the pedal. She’s helped me write out lead sheets and understand the value of what I am doing on paper. And even though I don’t always understand why she is telling me to do these things at first, inevitably I come to understand.

Now I am recording an album and am picking up session musicians.  If I have lead sheets-- guess what?-- they can just step in and play. What she tells me always comes around to be truthful. It all comes around full circle eventually.

I practice my music every day now. She has helped me to realize the value of that. When you actually do it, it makes a big difference.

With Ann, prepare yourself for a ride. She is such a grounding force, it’s hard to appreciate it at first. People have to be able to appreciate the fact that you have someone with great experience and a resume to kill for.  A lot of people come in with the expectation that she is going to discover them and make the right phone call. And eventually, that’s kind of what she does, but not in the way that people might expect. She hasn’t called up the head of the record label and said, “You need to sign Britt right now.” And that’s a good thing, because I definitely wasn’t ready for that, unbeknownst to me.  But what she has done is to gradually introduce me to a huge network of people.

Ann is traditional in a lot of ways, about the core of what music is about. If we stray too far from that core, we are going into that area of what is bringing the music industry down. It’s easy to get caught up in what is happening with the digital age. But it comes down to this: if you can’t play, you can’t play. She teaches us how to have that staying power, in order to have heels to fall back on. She shows how to send out email blasts. She stays current, but she focuses on the core. In the flurry of everything that’s happening, people lose sight of the core of music, which is to practice every day.

She’s my teacher, but it’s more than that. She’s more like a den mother for young, up-and-coming musicians.

Her legacy is being that embracing person that takes you in and supports you in the kick-in-the-pants kind of way. Her way of loving me is to tell me to quit riding the pedal. Her way of making me a better person is telling me that I need to play my song in every key. It’s tough love. But I know that’s what I need. She challenges and pushes me to be better. One of the first times that she met me, she cornered me and said, “I think that no one has really pushed you before.” To have that tough love is actually what I needed. It’s hard to swallow, but there are very few people that can do that, so effectively, and in such a supportive way.

I know that she would do anything she could to help me, and that she is always going to do what is in my best interest. It always takes a few months to ingest what she is telling me. But she turns out to be right.

“If you don’t love me,” Ann always says, “You’re wrong, and I refuse to be offended.”