Gina brings joy and skill to everything musical she's involved with. It's impossible to not be enthralled by her obvious love for music and her fine communication skills.
- Tony Marcus
Gina’s long-awaited debut album, Field Notes, garnered immediate acclaim and international radio airplay as far afield as the UK. Her collaboration with the award-winning guitarist-producer Marc Atkinson not only joyously captures Gina’s buoyant personality, but melodiously articulates a professional life passionately dedicated to the composition, performance, and teaching of music.
Although the delightfully pastoral Field Notes is Gina’s first recording, it should be viewed as yet another milestone on a musical journey that has already been underway for many years. To that end, her ever-expanding resume is as diverse as it is fascinating and impressive.
Diverse? Absolutely. For example, in an extraordinary scenario that would stretch even the wildest imagination, at Aerial Americana in Seattle, in November 2022, Gina performed her beautiful songs backed by the 43-piece Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra (under the direction of Geoffrey Larson), while the eminent aerialists troupe, Emerald City Trapeze Arts, soared and swooped overhead!
An emotive singer and highly proficient multi-instrumentalist, the irrepressible Gina completed a five-year music program at the University of Victoria, BC, attaining a Bachelor of Music Degree in French Horn, specializing in music education. This qualification in vocal and instrumental music education has seen Gina in great demand as an educator, creating a clear career path and leading to niche opportunities such as teaching vocal technique and hosting The Big Sing! A Vocal Harmony Party at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop in Bremerton, WA, in the summer of 2022.
An experienced workshop and choir leader, Gina put her considerable talents and innate flair for communication to excellent use for four years as a Director of Choirs at Waldorf High School in Seattle, WA, where she also gave private lessons. Choir, both classical and contemporary, is a field of musical expression at which Gina excels and cherishes extensive involvement within. Her great enthusiasm and love for the form led directly to her working as the Artistic Director of the Comox Valley Children’s Choir in her present homebase of Courtenay on Vancouver Island. Gina also leads workshops in schools, for community groups, and at adult music camps close to home, throughout the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, and California.
Aside from her accomplished work in vocal and choral realms, and as a fast-rising solo artist, the ever-smiling Gina revels in close harmony singing, notably with the sister group The New Davis Sisters, and Sirens of the Salish Sea, featuring Jenny Lester, Tammy Fassaert, and Ali Romanow.
And yet it’s not all about the voice with Gina! A skilled guitarist and instinctive multi-instrumentalist, her adventures in music include performing extensively on the horn line with the Seattle-based, 24-piece street marching band, The Filthy FemCorps. Describing themselves as “a hot bag full of fierce, badass women who aren’t afraid to be weird, genuine, raw, sweaty, confident, honest, loving and real,” this hi-octane “sisterhood of musical warriors” performs music written and/or popularized by women alongside original material. A huge festival favourite, they have appeared all over the Pacific Northwest and in many other communities across the USA.
In a natural environment for Gina she is a certified BC teacher, to that end currently working as an elementary classroom music teacher, teaching modern band and contemporary music, with many of her students learning keyboards, guitars, vocals and ukulele. Typical of her compassionate nature Gina has also earned a Degree in Child and Youth Care, specializing in helping high risk youth. It is such as this humanity, her laudable dedication to education, and an unfettered joie de vivre that attract so many to Gina as a person, and – as Field Notes so amply illustrates - it is these beautiful human qualities than shine so brightly through her music.
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Biography: David Morrison