Ted Barris

It might have been the night she opened in the musical “Oliver” as the character Fagin and sang, “You have to pick a pocket or two.” Then again, it could have happened when she played the White Rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland.” They were both staged when our daughter attended public school. On one of those occasions she asked us for some last minute advice.

“Imagine I’m at the back of the auditorium, Whitney,” I said to her. “And sing out, so I can hear you from there.”

The fact is she hardly needed any backstage counsel. Whitney had both the power and the presence to deliver whatever lines or vocals she needed to the back of any hall. But as much as I’d like to think Nature had something to do with Whit’s ability to project convincingly, I believe more strongly that Nurture did. The notion that “it takes a whole village to raise a child,” comes to mind. Whether coined in African culture or by a number of authors, including Hillary Rodham Clinton in her 1996 book, in our daughter’s case I think this extraordinary talent she possesses today comes from the community of support she has enjoyed all her life.

Music always seemed to come naturally for her – whether singing in choirs, playing trumpet, piano, recorder or guitar. And for that ability she would be the first to acknowledge some extraordinary teachers in and around this town. Whitney sat at the piano and learned musical expression with Susan Hall. She learned the joy of performing on trumpet in bands with Joseph Gould instructor Jenny Kanis. But she got the urge to sing out vocally with musical directors such as John Wilson, Donna Van Veghel, Tom Baker, Conrad Boyce, Charles White, Rory Snider-McGrath and Gord Girvan.

Tuesday night, an audience at Toronto’s west-end Lula Lounge were the beneficiaries of all that extraordinary coaching. Our daughter, now Whitney Ross-Barris, debuted her first CD of jazz music – featuring some standards, some original tunes she’s composed, but also a series of songs inherited from her grandfather. The album, appropriately named “Everybody’s Here,” showcased the gift of all those childhood teachers, musical collaborators and believers.

But the CD and the Lula show also illustrated that some of Whitney’s musical passion has come from her “Papou,” Alex Barris. You see, in 1941 when my father was 19 and fancied himself a crooner, he composed a number of jazz ballads. When he returned from overseas service in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, Dad visited a small downtown New York studio called Nola.

The product of those sessions was a handful of score sheets and 45-rpm recordings that were stowed away and pretty much forgotten until Whitney found them in my dad’s effects after he died in 2004. Not only has she re-introduced them in her performances, she went back to Nola (still a functioning studio in New York) to record some of those same tunes for her CD.

“I’m humbled and so grateful for the music that my Papou has given me,” Whitney said. “Beyond its incredible value to me, as his granddaughter and as a singer, I hope that the world really enjoys listening to his songs as much as I have enjoyed singing and recording them.”

And even if neither her Papou Alex nor her Yiayia (grandmother) Kay could be there in person to listen, the other night, other members of her blood and musical family were. The two loves of her life – husband Ian and son Coen – as well as her two aunts, a couple of proxy aunts and uncles, her sister and her parents all watched and admired. Also there in body and spirit were some of her childhood musical friends – Alida Wesselo, Jessie Baird, Chris Skinner, Janet Green and Liam Webster among others – for without the harmony of those friendships she might never have taken so confidently to the stage at all.

And the title of her debut album, “Everybody’s Here,” makes the point. Back in September when Whitney decided to return to New York to record a few of my father’s tunes at Nola Recording Studios, she and her pianist/arranger Mark Kieswetter stepped into the recording studio and unpacked their music. Mark sat down at a Steinway piano left behind in the studio by the great Erroll Garner and prepared to play. Whitney said the two of them were suddenly speechless – silent in the time and place – until Mark looked around and calmly said, “Yeah, feels like everybody’s here.”

“It seemed all the musicians, singers and songwriters I’ve adored over the years, were there in the studio listening,” Whitney wrote later, “their music suspended in the air around us like an electric mist.”

That mist, she would be first to add, included her mentors, teachers, pals and family who helped lift that mist to a joyous sound.