Biography
Susan was born in Brooklyn, New York, and spent her early years on Long Island. Though her parents were not musicians, they had a passionate interest in classical music, and therefore Susan was exposed to it from an early age through recordings and radio. When she was 8 years old, the family moved to eastern Massachusetts, where she started taking piano lessons from the piano teacher next door. She continued her study of classical piano through grade school, high school, and into college at the University of Vermont.
However, since reading Thoreau in high school, Susan had cherished a dream of being a subsistence farmer like Thoreau in his Walden Pond experiment, and therefore she left UVM before achieving a degree to pursue the idea of growing her own food. When she discovered that some source of outside income was necessary even in small farming, she decided to take up piano tuning and repair to provide that income, attending and completing a course in piano tuning, repair, and rebuilding at Western Iowa Technical Community College.
Back in Massachusetts, as piano tuning and repair became a fulfilling, hands-on metier, Susan relinquished her plan of becoming a farmer and concentrated on pianos instead.
While living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 1980s, she took up the study of jazz piano, first under the tutelage of the late Tony King, and later with David Hazeltine. She also began studying voice with Jesse Hauck. After receiving a certificate in Jazz Studies at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee, Susan launched her performing career, first in Milwaukee, and later in Ohio and Virginia.
She moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1997, working as a piano tuner/technician until about 2002. Susan plays regularly at Tucson area clubs and restaurants, as well as in concerts and jazz festivals. Wherever she performs, she charms audiences with her sultry voice and sophisticated piano interpretations of classic jazz standards by the likes of Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter and others; as well as “new” standards by Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and others.