(Ninth of a series)

Singer Lorna Cifra’s surname may have sealed her fate, but as any musician that’s ever had to make their own way in the gnarly terrain of music-making quickly finds out, a sound musical career is built on good and bad choices, a smidge of luck, and diligence of the sort that leaves little room for much else.     

But Lorna had a leg up: She was raised by jazz-loving parents, and it was almost certain that she would pursue a life singing jazz. She is convinced that she’s an old soul. “The ear and the love for jazz [standards], according to my mom, [appeared] when I was two,” she says. “I sang before I talked. That song was ‘The Nearness of You,’ my mom’s favorite.”

But if she had to sing that same standard today, her audience would likely struggle to recognize the insanely popular tune even well into the first several notes because Lorna, like the best improvisers, has reimagined it as her own. Initially it may sound anything but the original—until it does, because all songs eventually find their way home. 

As Lorna always does, too, shuttling between Osaka in Japan, where she lives most of the year running a music school while gigging in Kobe, Japan’s jazz capital, and Manila, where she also manages a vocal studio. The visits to Manila have become more frequent in the last couple of years, she says, after she won the Aliw award for Best Jazz Artist Based Abroad two years in a row, in 2022 and 2023.

Turning point

“That was a turning point for me,” Lorna says. “I felt it was time to give back. We have a lot of excellent singers here with the potential to become great jazz vocalists, and if I can contribute to that, I will. These days I find myself in Manila at least four times a year, running the music school and doing some gigs on the side. And I’m having a blast.”

It does seem like the thrill of the open road has not waned for Lorna since she first left the country to sing at Hyatt Busan, through one of her mentors, Rudy Francisco, Hyatt Manila’s resident pianist and entertainment director.  Busan was, in fact, her jump-off point for the Hilton chain across Japan, performing with an all-Filipino band called Nostalgia—the first foreign band, she says, to play at the Hilton hotels in Japan. 

“When you’re young, you think you’ll be forever young,” she says, adding that the late 1980s through to the early 2000s were simply her best years. “Six nights a week, three sets a night, playing with the same people—the perfect recipe for both fun and stress.” A venue might also hire only her, in which case she’d play with local musicians, as what happened for a spell in Singapore. 

Jazz, after all, is a universal language. 

Lorna eventually married in Japan, but she says she insisted that her Japanese husband let her work. The early days of adjusting to the culture were challenging, but the couple received ample support from both sides, which allowed Lorna to carry on performing and presently run her own vocal studio that grew out of a request from a Kobe-based school for her to teach jazz vocals. 

“I guess we all go through a lot before reaping the harvest,” she says. “Japan has a wide jazz audience, which inspired me to go on further studies. I also learned a lot while teaching.” 

So off she went to New York City where she attended workshops run by jazz musicians like Peter Martin (Dianne Reeves’ pianist) and the late Trudi Mann, vocalist and percussionist. For 20 years, between trips to Osaka and New York, she squeezed in performances in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Seoul, and the United States at top local hotels and jazz venues. In 2008 she earned her US Jazz Artist visa. 

“Jazz in NYC is unbeatable,” says Lorna. “[At the time] the pressure of being Asian doing jazz was tremendous. But I was determined [to carve out my space]—a character trait that I got from my grandfather who, back in the day, had worked as an apple picker by day and saxophone player by night. I got to play with the locals, built a little niche, and eventually started teaching jazz in a school called Musika, an online American music school.” 

Her romance

Lorna scats, a love for scat syllables blossoming early as she listened to her parents’ record collection. Of course, scatting did not figure in her first, if furtive, stint as a singer of Joni Mitchell and Carole King covers in a famous pizza joint as a college student at the University of Santo Tomas. But she had to start somewhere, following piano and guitar lessons, and eventually playing an Electone organ when, at 15, she was put in charge of the church choir.

She continues to listen to the younger generation of vocal scatters like Veronica Swift and Cecile McLorin Salvant. This keeps her limber, she says: “Having [a] strong ear is key to better improvisation. It’s good for practice especially when I look forward to a jazz gig or festival.” 

Besides, there will always be new notes to explore. As the classical pianist Glenn Gould said, “The nature of the contrapuntal experience is that every note has to have a past and a future on the horizontal plane.” And because Lorna loves bebop, she tunes in closely to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk, among others, “to learn some of their licks, phrases, and cadenzas that I might be able to infuse in my materials.” 

Lorna adds: “One thing going for the Manila jazz audience is that it’s getting younger. Thus, we are more interactive, such as the audiences at Tago.”

She constantly reminds her students to keep their eyes on the ball: It’s not enough to love singing; they must create and own their songs. “Listen to the jazz legends,” she says. “Imitate, assimilate, then innovate. Learn an instrument; read notes to enhance creativity. Get a mentor. Listen, listen, listen. Practice, practice, practice. Learn as many standards as you can. It’s paradise when you absorb the behaviors in jazz performance. Jazz sets you free, and it’s a good community to be in. Jazz is good for your heart and soul.”

I know it does Lorna’s heart and soul wonders. In September I caught her last show at Tago, which had in the audience some of her students who jammed in the open-mic segment. I felt breathless all night, keeping up with Lorna’s dizzying hotfoot journey through jazz standards and bebop classics. 

After physical and mental preparations for a show, Lorna says, “I treat my stage like a prayer. You can’t go wrong if you give honor and glory to the Creator, with whom I partner every day on and off stage.”   

She goes on that sacred stage again on Dec. 16 at the University Hotel in UP Diliman, in a yearend show for the benefit of Seniors on the Move, with her unit band in Manila comprising our finest jazz musicians—Tots Tolentino, Yong Aquino, Dave Harder, and Rey Vinoya. Part of the evening’s repertoire will include some “Salinawit” songs (or Filipino translations of The Great American Songbook standards) by our dearly beloved poet and journalist Pete Lacaba. 

“For me it’s all about creating, sharing, and performing till I drop,” says Lorna.

Oh boy, does she mean it.

Read more: Portraits in Jazz: Tago is Nelson Gonzales’ happy madness