Mary D'Orazi

Mary D'Orazi’s warm, lyrical, mezzo soprano voice can color melodies across various genres. She possesses a crystalline tone, strong rhythmic sensibility and thoughtful phrasing. On a rhythmically complex, highly syncopated Brazilian song, her vocal lightness and flexibility come into play. In vocal harmony, singing jazz or pop, she has the aural sensitivity to blend, nuance and dance with other voices.

Brazilian music has become a solid landing place for Mary, who has sung various styles throughout her life, and it seems to be a natural fit for her in terms of feel and expression. Over the past decade, Mary has devoted most of her practice to learning an expanse of Brazilian repertoire, with Rio-born pianist/composer Marcos Silva as her mentor. As someone who doesn’t speak Portuguese, Mary’s pronunciation has fooled many a native Brazilian and she will give credit to lots of practice, a bit of language study, a good ear and assistance from Silva.

As a child she fell in love with the songs on the hit album Sérgio Mendes & Brazil ‘66, but it wasn’t until decades later when she was attending Jazz Camp West that she decided to study Brazilian music after meeting Silva. “I took some classes with him at the Jazzschool,” Mary says, referring to the institution now accredited as the California Jazz Conservatory (where Silva is head of the Brazilian music program). “The intricacies, the melodies, harmonic complexities and the poetry of the lyrics hooked me.”

Born in Oakland, CA and growing up in a musical household with Italian immigrant parents, Mary watched her father writing songs throughout her childhood. A doctor by day, he spent his free time composing on the ukulele at night. She took eight years of piano lessons and sang in various choirs throughout her adolescence, but by the time she enrolled in college her musical pursuits had fallen by the wayside. Eventually her long suppressed desire to sing bubbled up when a friend asked her what she most wanted to do with her life. “I answered, ‘Be a singer,’ which kind of shocked me,” she says. In her mid-30s she started taking private voice lessons.

Always interested in jazz, she found her niche when she joined the Oakland Jazz Choir under the direction of Greg Murai. “Greg brought a lot of energy and excitement to the choir,” she recalls. “And I met a lot of musicians. This was a jumping off place for me, a jolt into a new life. I was kind of hiding in the back at first, but I ended up doing some solos out front, and eventually realized it was time to move on and focus on solo work.”

She started gigging widely around the Bay Area, and formed an early alliance with guitarist Terrence Brewer, with whom she recorded the duo CD Where There Is Love (under the name Mary Freeberg). But it was her creatively charged relationship with Silva that set her on her present course. While she still considers herself a student of jazz and Brazilian music, Mary grew from dedicated student to musical colleague, performing at major concerts series and venues around Northern California with Silva. Show less