Album Notes

What do you get when you take a small town girl raised by big city parents, send her to college, combine singing and songwriting, add in a cup of theatre, fold in a plethora of film making, season with teaching and bake for more than a decade? You get Vanessa T. Ament.

After studying opera and musical theatre, Vanessa turned to jazz. "I love the technique of classical voice and the story telling of musical theatre. But nothing beats a song that swings or is reinvented", says Vanessa. When one listens to her interpretations of established material, the influences of all three musical forms are obvious.

Vanessa has appeared with Shirley Jones, Randy Sparks and the Backporch Majority, Skiles and Henderson, Skip Stevenson, Burns and Schrieber and Michelle Hendricks. Her influences as a singer/songwriter include Mark Murphy, Kurt Elling, Sonny Wilkinson, Mel Torme, Dave Frishberg and Sting. In addition to The Gardena, Lunaria, The Horn, The Itchy Foot, The Rose, Anaheim Convention Center, and Bob Ralston's Concerts in the Los Angeles area, Vanessa has performed at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, Starlight Theatres in Indianapolis and Kansas City, California State Fair, A.M. Los Angeles, Tammy Faye and Jimmy J., and Late Night with David Letterman.

While auditioning for acting and singing jobs, Vanessa trained as a Foley Artist at a small post-production house in Los Angeles, and what started out to be a gig between performing work turned into a lucrative career for over a decade. She went on to learn sound editing and worked on over one-hundred films as a Foley Artist, editor and voice actor.

Vanessa is an avid songwriter and eight of the songs on her first CD are her originals. Her song "Every Other Night" is featured in the independent film FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS and "He Wants Me Back" received airplay on college radio. The novelty tune, "Two Steps Forward and One Step Back" received the songwriting award for best whimsical song in a recent CALL TO ARTS competition.


HERE IS WHAT CRITICS SAY ABOUT VANESSA

"Vanessa Ament has it all and gives it all. A voice as gorgeous as hers ought to be attraction enough. But she is also an alluring performer with a timelessly refined style, who is equally thrilling when singing cabaret and jazz classics, or her own divine originals."

- Richard Scaffidi, former president of Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, former Associate Editor with Drama-Logue and former theatre critic with Los Angeles Free Press and Backstage West

"Vanessa T. Ament's voice rings out as bracingly a bell hung in a church that even atheists would want to attend. Beyond its acoustic juices, her new CD offers lyrical pleasures ranging from the simple poignancy of "Bicycle Man" to the complex irony of "I Always Do What I'm Told" to the tangy eroticism of "Come Over Here." I hope that Ms. Ament continues to eschew the net for decades to come."

-James Morrow, author of City of Truth and Towing Jehovah

"WORKING WITHOUT A NET is a delight. Vanessa Ament's music brings a fresh approach to some old favorites and introduces her own compositions that have the feel of the classic jazz era with a fun, contemporary edge."

- Steve Lee, Hollywood Lost And Found.