Sue Sheriff - My Story

From as early as six years old music, singing and entertaining have been a strong part of my identity. I learned to play the piano by ear and rehearsed Judy Garland tunes into a tin can that I imagined to be a microphone. I appeared on local television shows and performed in a variety of theatre groups. Singing and performing were driving passions of mine up through high school and until my college years, when regrettably I set singing and performing aside and lost touch with my connection to music.

 

Years later the call to sing and perform started to make itself heard again – I couldn’t really stop my soul’s desire. In 1991 my husband and I adopted our son from Romania. He was already 21 months old and naturally needed help adjusting to his new life. My way of reaching and comforting him like many mothers was to sing to him all the time. From this natural instinct I began writing little songs, but I kept them just between the two of us until one day when a close girlfriend admired my songs and encouraged me to keep going.

 

Feeling divinely inspired, I started to write and refine many songs. In 1995, I released my first album “Love Buddies,” a collection of 10 original songs produced with talented musicians in our Southern Maine community. With these songs I rekindled my love for performance, putting myself out there in a small, but exciting way in local venues.

 

Three years later I attended a week-long workshop on mime lead by the late Tony Montanaro, a world famous mime-artist, and his wife Karel Hurll-Montanaro. They both adored my music, but had the sensitivity to see I didn’t believe in myself and lacked the self confidence to fully realize my potential. Greatly inspired by them and this new insight, I had a burst of creativity and wrote new songs to help children who felt like me. My second album “Believe in Yourself” was the result and I’m very honored by the Parent’s Choice Recommended Award it won. My husband performed the songs with me all over New England in an interactive show reinforcing the positive messages of the album: self-esteem, joy, friendship and love.

 

In the meantime, I discovered Music Together, an internationally-recognized, educationally-based music program for children from birth to kindergarten and their parents and care-givers. Its mission resonated with me and I became a Center Director. I started out with only 6 classes and it kept growing and growing and to this day, my staff and I offer 35+ classes throughout the greater Portland area and in the last 10 years have served over 5,000 children. I am so lucky to experience joy every day in my work!

 

Through the multitude of children I’ve worked with, I’ve come to understand children have many different learning styles. Some learners are more visual, some are auditory and respond to beat and tone easily and others are more kinesthetic and just have to get out there and try things. To address these different learning styles, I have developed a teaching tool that uses all three approaches to get a message across. I’ve also come to see music play a key support role for families as they manage really challenging, big life issues ranging from adjusting to new siblings, general anxiety, and autism to divorce or a death of a loved one. Because I know first hand music’s influence, I have geared my song-writing to these bigger life issues.

 

My book, In Harmony and Other Songs of Peace offers a multi-media approach to learning. A CD with music covers the auditory learning style. The images and text support visual learners and the interactive worksheets are great for the kinesthetic learners. The focus of the book is on peace and what it means to be a peacemaker in the world. Given the interconnectedness of our world today and the delicate balance we are in as a planet, it seems a most important message to be giving to our youngest generation. It is my vision that this book will offer a fun and easy way to help families discuss and teach their children values that are important for living in our challenging times and will give them a tool to help their children internalize these lessons. This book covers both inner peace and world peace because to live in harmony with each other, we must begin with harmony inside ourselves.

 

Contact Sue Sheriff for more information.