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Diane Linscott is a jazz singer and a composer—as well as a sculptor and painter and printmaker and the creator of “contraptions” and “botch art.” A little lane off Castine Road wends its way down to a grassy and treed opening with an old cabin snugly overlooking the water, and a freestanding studio where Linscott has been creating “everything,” it seems, for 16 years. As a child growing up in Newport, she took the train to Bangor, studied dance, and always drew; and as a younger adult she composed chamber music. She’s currently at work on a symphony.
The interim years between Newport and Castine, she studied psychology and journalism, raised a family, and lived in Bangor, was a member of the Junior League, served on the first advisory board for Maine Center for the Arts, and was the wife of a Bangor lawyer who died young. And at the age of 52, she began to sing professionally—the songs of jazz vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, and Billie Holiday. Her most recent CD, Our Day at the Movies, is a collection of 13 songs from Hollywood’s Golden Age, all originally performed by Doris Day.
A “snowbird,” Diane Linscott sings every week in the summer at the Manor Inn in Castine, and at various venues in Florida. Last winter she was part of the Women of Jazz concert series at the Palladium in St. Petersburg and was featured at the Sarasota Jazz Festival.
You were almost 50 when you decided to be a professional jazz singer. What gave you the courage to do that?
I heard [jazz vocalist] Sheila Jordan in Portland. During the concert, she said she was 56 years old. And I thought, Wow, she’s out there on the stage, 56 years old, a powerhouse. Maybe I could still do that. I knew about the Jazz in July workshop at the University of Massachusetts with Billy Taylor, and I got an application off the wall in the music department at the University [of Maine in Orono]. It was an age-blind application. I sent in an audition tape, and I was accepted, with a scholarship. [Her husband died suddenly the day she was to leave, and so she attended a year later.]
A bit of an age difference between you and the other students?
You bet. They were very young—singers and trumpet players, pianists, bassists, all breaking out into the music world. It was great.
Do you remember the first time you sang in public?
I sang with Hal Wheeler at a party at the Tarratine Club [in Bangor]. There were lots of intimate venues around here then. I sang at the Left Bank Café in Blue Hill regularly, at the Asticou, Goose Cove, and that one in Dixmont, the Benloch Inn.
How did you start out?
Well, my first pianist was Ronnie Lord. He used to tune my piano. I had this wonderful Mason Hamlin grand piano. He tuned it twice a year. When I came back from the Billy Taylor workshop and asked him to play with me, he refused. He just knew me as the wife of a lawyer. But then when I got a gig, I tried again and he said, “OK, come down and bring a lead sheet.” I did and I sang, and he said, “Wow!” That was the start.
Was music an integral part of your childhood?
Ever since I sang “Little Sir Echo” when I was three years old, I saw myself as an artist. [She points to Margaret Chase Smith on the cover of the September Bangor Metro.] In fact, I danced and sang for her once when she came to Newport.
How do you choose a song?
The sentiment of the lyric. I’m telling a story. That’s what a vocalist has in her arsenal over an instrumentalist, that ability to tell a story. That’s how you touch people. Because your story is the same as theirs, just a different arrangement of circumstances. Gershwin and Porter, Ellington, they all knew that.
Who would be on your favorite jazz singer list that might be surprising to some?
Probably Frank Sinatra. He wasn’t considered a jazz singer, but to me he swung, so what else is there? And his phrasing was without peer.
What are you interested in now?
I’m interested in doing my thing as well as I can do it. There are so many fabulous singers out there that people don’t know about. Today, it’s all about marketing. To me what it’s about is that I have done this—I work with world-class musicians, I make recordings, and I play with the best. They respect me and I respect them. I’d love to be heard by a wider audience, but really I just want to be the best I can be at what I’m doing.
You compose, create art jewelry, make monotypes, you do sculpture, and you sing. Being so multidisciplinary, how do you maintain all of that? How does it impact your singing?
Philosophically I think everything in the world is connected. Every discipline tries to separate itself from everything else, but they’re not. Everything is so connected. I don’t see it as impacting negatively, except that if I were to focus on one I might have made a bigger splash. But I can’t. People say, “You have so much talent.” And I say, “I have one talent: When I get up in the morning, I want to do it.” We are given these gifts and I think I was given the gift of music and singing. I don’t mean to sound noble. I just mean that we are all given gifts. Some of us are just too lazy to use them and cop out.
You must be faced with some serious time choices.
I am. It’s both a curse and a blessing.
