(Eighth of a series)

“…Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. 
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply…” 

To those lines of Huxley’s poetry from his novel Island, one readily conjures up the image of Lynn Sherman—singer, actor, animal rights activist, and, in her words, “frustrated model”—seamlessly gliding into any of those incarnations. She always exalts a moment: Lynn is easy on the eye, and every performance she’s ever turned in has always been from a heart at play with possibilities.

“But I don’t sing just jazz, ha,” she quickly tells me, a detail that would be obvious to anyone who’s been tracking 20th-century Pinoy jazz and Original Pilipino Music (OPM). 

From 1993 to 2001 Lynn was lead singer for the 10-piece band Ugoy Ugoy, comprising five horns and a full rhythm section, which fused elements of big-band jazz, funk, and Filipino pop and rock. Those were heady days for local jazz, to be sure, and especially OPM, as some groundbreaking bands emerging at the time would forever alter the Filipino musicscape, such as the Eraserheads, Hayp, and Yano, among others.

“Being in the band expanded my world of music,” she says. “I learned songs by Blood Sweat & Tears, Tower of Power, Count Basie, Chicago, KC & The Sunshine Band, to name just a few.” For eight years Ugoy Ugoy played in both jazz and alternative music bars across the metro, in hotels and special venues; they toured the country and several cities in the United States. The band’s long and successful run ended when some of its members had to leave for abroad.

They hadn’t always been known as Ugoy Ugoy, though. The core group of the UP Jazz Ensemble, for whom Lynn sometimes sang—”In college I took voice lessons at the UP College of Music, and that’s where I would hang out, despite being a humanities major,” she recalls—would be called “The Big Band” when it was formed by talent manager Wyngard Tracy in 1993. On their own a few months later, “The Big Band” morphed into “The Bourbon St. Big Band,” until their new managers in 1994 suggested the name “Ugoy Ugoy,” referencing the swinging action one does when rocking a cradle. 

“I thought it captured the essence of the group because it signified our jazz funk roots; at the same time, it sounded Pinoy,” says Lynn. In 1996 Ugoy Ugoy recorded the jazz crossover album Step into the Rhythm, featuring Latinized versions of OPM classics. 

Into her rhythm

Lynn’s audacious style and diverse musical taste reflect the vocalists on her playlist that reaches wide across the jazz, R&B, and pop spectrum (“Sarah Vaughan, Chaka Khan, Betty Carter, Diane Schuur, Meshell Ndegeocello, Joni Mitchell, Kevyn Lettau, Joni Mitchell, Olivia Newton John, and Sting,” she offers up in one breath). 

Her local musical inspiration roster is equally impressive. “I am a fan of so many Filipino artists, too,” she says. “I guess it helps that I am also friends with many of them. But I have to say that APO Hiking Society must top this list, as I will never tire of listening to their music or watching their shows.”

In two trips to the United States in 1996 and 1997 and to Singapore in 1999, Ugoy Ugoy performed as the front act and backing band for APO Hiking Society. In Palmdale and Oxnard, California, Ugoy Ugoy also had its own solo shows; in Oxnard the band even held a workshop for music students.  

Lynn and her husband, arranger and composer Bond Samson, are currently on a US tour with APO (for which Bond is the musical director)—a life on the road that she’s taken to with grace and gratitude. It must be wonderful being married to your musical partner and counting decades of togetherness partly in terms of creative collaborations and largely celebrating a friendship that has been going on for the longest time.   

“Bond and I are actually from the same high school although he is from a different batch,” says Lynn. “We started going out when we were in college—I was a voice student at the UP College of Music where we met and started to hang out. It’s lots of fun being in the same band as your partner. In the case of Ugoy Ugoy … we were friends before we ever were a band, so we always had fun as a group.” 

Because all of the Ugoy members had their own activities, be these playing with other musicians, backing up other artists, or, in Lynn’s case, performing in a play, their times together as a band were particularly special.  She says, “Making music and lyrics also with my hubby is definitely a plus. I always appreciate his insight.”

Most memorable moments

Lynn’s return to theater and pivot to television as producer and host, and film, would yield some of the most memorable moments on stage and TV. She performed in the local musical productions of Rent, The Sound of Music, Falsettos, Cabaret, The Bluebird of Happiness, The Little Mermaid, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, and in the Singapore production of Beauty and the Beast.

She produced and hosted the Lynn Sherman Show on RJTV in 2006-2007, and was host and writer for an episode of the Lifestyle TV show Living Asia. 

She also acted in local and international movies, notably Santa Mesa (2008) directed by the New York-based Ron Morales, and which won the Best Dramatic Narrative Feature Award at the San Diego American Film Festival. It was also given the Special Jury Award at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival in 2008.

Between 2010 and 2011, Lynn performed on the international cruise ship Nippon Maru with a repertoire of Japanese, English and Filipino music. 

In 2019 Ugoy Ugoy had a much-awaited, if unplanned, reunion concert in 19 East, titled Ugoy Ugoy 25, which celebrated the band’s 25th founding anniversary, no matter that they hadn’t played as Ugoy for years. It was a sentimental and joyful show, with three of its former members in town, serendipitously, from overseas. “It was also the last time we performed and hung out with Tito Hilario, our good friend; he was also our sax and flute player,” says Lynn. “Tito passed on in October 2023.”

PAWS and striking a pose

Followers of Lynn on social media (Facebook, Tiktok, and YouTube @lynnsherman) will know that she is an animal rights champion and a volunteer for the Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS). 

“I truly appreciate what they are doing to help [raise the level of care for] our aspins and puspins,” she says. “Currently I have seven cats, two dogs, and one horse, all of whom are rescues. The horse is a rescue from the Taal Volcano eruption and PAWS in fact helped me learn about [these horses’] plight. She now lives in Iba, Zambales, with some of her rescued horse siblings at the Artana Eco Farm.”

Her whimsical side also gets its play on social media—and in real life—where she wears and effectively models creations by her good friend Odit Sarte. “She has made me a number of outfits … and over the years, to keep track of what they are, I decided to make videos of myself wearing them, set to music,” Lynn says, breaking into a laugh. “So yes, I could well be a frustrated model.”  

But she is not quite done trying out what fits and wears well in the public spaces afforded by the arts and even technology—an instinct that speaks to Lynn’s lightness of being. A few months ago, she created leaf prints, inspired by her sister who teaches the course in Madison, Wisconsin, and promptly presented it in a group exhibit at Pinto Museum. 

And, no, she clearly isn’t done with singing either, these days performing regularly in hotels and venues around Manila as a soloist and as a guest singer for the Colby Dela Calzada Jazz Quartet, which won the Aliw Award for the best jazz group in 2023.

By her count Lynn has featured in more than 100 concerts around the Philippines and in key cities across the world. From where I sit, that sounds like she is truly “treading lightly, on tiptoes and no luggage…completely unencumbered.”

Read more: All that Jazz: The music lives here