Meet Cathy Segal-Garcia

We recently connected with Cathy Segal-Garcia and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cathy, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
One place was from my mom. She was always asking, “What should we do NOW?!” My sisters and I got that “next?” gene! Another thing is that I love experiences. Maybe it’s jazz that influences me, maybe being a Gemini…but I like spontaneous experiences! It feeds my soul. And I love performing, so I’ve always been open to performances coming my way. Very rarely have I turned something down. And I realized a long time ago that things that help everybody (plus myself) are the best to create in the world. Everybody wins. I’m always getting new ideas. Sometimes others don’t believe in those ideas, but it doesn’t matter, if I really like it.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m a vocalist…mostly jazz. I’ve been singing and attached to jazz all my life, and I’m 70 years old right now! I also grew up college age, in Boston, went to Berklee College of Music. And during that time music was vibrant! Mowtown, Woodstock, ECM, funk, blues, new jazz…I was influenced by a lot of earthy music, and definitely open styles of jazz; Miles, Weather Report, Bob Moses, Jaco, Metheny, Scofield. Even tho I travelled along the Great American Songbook path for years, my singing and compositions reflect it all.

I travelled and lived in Europe and Japan, where I sang and taught. I consider Japan my 2nd home, traveling every year there since the mid 80’s. I’ve been more of a live performance singer, altho I have 15 albums out, and I’m just finishing 3 more. I’ve sung and recorded with many “stars” of jazz, especially guitarists. I’m attracted to guitar.

I’ve taught for many years, privately and at universities and private schools. I love teaching. I love to get into a person’s perspective, and guide from there. I love to help someone understand! I still teach, privately, in person and online, and while traveling.

Not only have I taught many workshops, but I also have created and still do, workshops for many other vocal artist/teachers. Over the last 25 years I’ve hosted hundreds of artists, in workshops and performances.

I’m an entrepreneur. I didn’t use to call it that, but I guess that is what you’d call what I do. I get ideas, and I act on them. I’ve created many venues, jazz series, jam sessions (I had one that lasted 16 years). I’m a glass half full type of person, so it’s difficult to make me think something is not going to work, once I believe in it!

I produce in the studio as well. I’m very good at producing singers, I bring out the best in them. And I produce the project, but I hire the people who know how to do what they do…engineers, arrangers, musicians.

When the pandemic started (the day everything shut down) I started a 2 hour interview online session with mostly jazz artists, from around the world. I knew many of them personally, and about 1/4 of them I didn’t know at all. This was through Zoom, live on facebook and youtube. The first 9 months I did it 6 days a week! Then went down to 3 days a week, then just posted the archives, and now I’m sneaking back in with 1 day a week! These were very special, to me and to others. It reminded us that we are of the same make-up as humans and artists, and that we balance out the earth from the negative. We’re important! And there’s a lot of us!

This year I’ve had a shift of perspective. I’m a very spiritually active person, always looking for lessons and growth. I’ve been so very busy for years, and now I’m trying to leave space in my life, for observing. Still teaching, producing, composing, practicing voice/flute/piano/theory, performing, traveling, connecting! But with space. I’ve always been attracted to space around things, so it makes sense.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Experience. Honest commitment to improvement. Communication.

When you’re younger, you have more ease to join in on anything. Money doesn’t matter that much to you, you may not have a family with responsibilities yet, less fear. Without putting yourself in obvious danger(!) do everything that comes your way. You’ll end up knowing what you like and don’t like, and you’ll meet people who will connect the dots elsewhere.
Don’t depend on the money that’s offered. It’s really not about the money. Money is nice and good. But that’s not the leading factor. The leading factors are interest, curiosity, creativity, love for what you’re doing, good purposes. They will lead the way to showing who you are, in the best light.

There’s no one to fool but yourself. Lies can be bought by others, but not by the person who creates them. Look deeply into yourself and set standards that make your heart feel good. It’s basically easy to feel if you feel good or bad about something. Stick to the good, no matter how challenging it may seem. Become better. It’s a process. It never actually ends. The process is what is important. Does it feel good? Can you marry yourself to improving, no matter how slow or fast it goes? Can you be committed to that forever?

Communication solves everything. Helps everything. Makes everything work, make sense. From relationships with others, to relationships with things, ideas, and yourself. If you get brave and are able to communicate sanely, you cannot lose.

Many years ago I had a realization. Anything can be solved. How? By being able to confront it, and take full responsibility for it. Wherever you’re at on a spiritual level, this lesson works. Because of my nature, I took that as deep as possible. This concept covers a lot of your life.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
The dearest books I have are by Stephen Nachmanovitch: Free Play, Improvisation in Life and the Arts. And Kenny Werner’s books on Effortless Mastery. They both spoke to me for perspective, which, after all, is really what all of life is about.

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