Music

I’ve been thinking in sound as long as I can remember.

As a child, I’d often disappear for hours when I found a piano—obsessively searching for what I could hear (or what I wanted to hear) while sleepover pals chatted and carried on all around me.

I majored in economics and minored in music, studying classical flute. After college, I worked in public radio as a classical music announcer and, eventually, music director—living inside a library of classical music, jazz, blues, bluegrass and folk. In my twenties I discovered poetry and earned an MFA.

Playing dulcimer (badly) with cousins in Kentucky. Singing pop songs with my daughter. Offering a song at a memorial service. Listening to Mozart’s Requiem in Prague. Teaching myself scales and jazz chords at the piano.

I love music!

Listen.

Here’s “River of Things”—live at Bazaar Cafe, San Francisco. Guitarist Ryan Coe and I closed the show with this one. By the end, people were dancing.

No one can tell you / when a song starts to rise—

Marla + Ryan

Ryan and I are good friends who started making music together in Marin County, California in 2023.

We both love intricate textures, gritty storytelling and Gillian Welch’s songwriting.

Come Hear Me Sing!

I’ll send you a note when I have a show coming up.