A jazz pianist, Rich Crandall, relocated from Chicago to Hawaii for a gig offer. Years later, his two-year-old daughter, Angela Crandall (SFS ’10), would run up to the microphone after one of his performances at the Unity Church with the intent of making the stage her own.
“That was my first big breakthrough,” she remembers with a laugh. “The pastor saw me and was like, ‘Oh, she’s so cute!’”
From that point forward, Crandall would be a regular feature during weekly services. And when her father started a continuous concert series known as Studio 6, Crandall performed one song before her father’s peers every Tuesday for ten years.
“The majority of the crowd that was there was older folks, so obviously they didn’t want some kid singing to them about love,” Crandall said. Instead, Crandall began with songs from her childhood, such as “Take Me Out to the Ballpark,” before gradually adding to her repertoire. “You have to adapt [as] you get older. As I’m reaching my 20s, I can begin to learn more heartfelt songs.”
During her senior year of high school, Rich introduced his daughter to the possibility of compiling her first major album. With a music label already under the family’s name, the pair turned their attention to a vast number of songs—from already established jazz hits to original compositions by Rich’s peers—that could serve as potential tracks on Shine.
“I have about 120 songs [in my repertoire], so we started cutting down material. Once we had narrowed the list, we started to see which arrangements we liked.”
Crandall’s friends—the same people with whom she had grown up singing—laid down the instrumental tracks for all of the songs in two days. The recording experience was striking—and a little terrifying. “Some people are live singers, and some people do better with recording,” she said. “You really sort of hear every breath [in the studio], but I think you grow accustomed to it after a while.”
By the time Crandall arrived at Georgetown in August of 2006 for her freshman year, Shine had already been completed, but coordinating the album’s release was difficult, since everyone else remained in Hawaii. Crandall kept busy and decided to hone her vocal skills with the Gracenotes, Georgetown’s only all-female acapella group.
This past summer, Crandall returned to Hawaii, where she collaborated with others on picture layout and graphic design for the album covers. Once she had taken care of all the details, she produced the actual CD through an online website. The CDs were subsequently shipped to Hawaii, and this past winter break, the Crandall family celebrated the official release of Shine. Samples of the songs can be found on the iTunes store, and the full CD can be purchased through websites including Amazon, Dig Station, and CD Baby.
Crandall hopes to introduce new music to her peers. “The two artists I admire most are Ellen Fitzgerald and Sara Vaughan,” she said. “Too often, I hear that jazz is for old people. I want to enlarge that age range. There are so many styles and ways you can approach [jazz] that I hope [people our age] will open up to it.”
