When 18-year-old Naomi LaViolette moved onto the University of Puget Sound campus for her freshman year, she was contemplating a degree in the medical sciences. Internal voices were advising her to pursue a career that was practical and she imagined that after finished school she might be a physical therapist. She selected her course load, declaring science as her major; music, one of her great pleasures and passions since she was quite young, was now to be a minor focus in her life. 

Young Naomi did enjoy sports. Though never officially a member of her university cross-country team she ran practices with the athletes– “well, more like behind them” she chuckled in recent conversation with OAW. Physical therapy – helping folks regain physical strength and ease pain – made sense.

So into the sciences she dove. For a while. Now, some 30-ish years later, Naomi ruefully admits that her struggles with college-level Calculus and Chemistry helped propel her next step. But she gives most credit to a college professor who bolstered her confidence and courage and helped lead her to where she is today. To a life filled with music and joy.

An afternoon conversation

Joy is the first thing you are likely to experience when entering Naomi LaViolette’s home south of Portland. It manifests first as a vibrating black bundle of doodle whose name, you can guess, is Joy and whose eyes sparkled and tail wagged with delight at the prospect of a willing playmate. Joy was not disappointed with me.

Naomi offered tea and a soft chair as we sat down to talk about her career. Joy obediently settled into her doggie bed close by to hear her human tell her story about choosing a life in music.  

That music-rich life, Naomi says, began around age four, an age when curiosity can be piqued and aptitudes revealed. And passion can follow.

Naomi has perfect pitch – the kind where you can identify pitches played on an instrument or in the song of a red-winged Blackbird – and at an early age was a wonderment at family parties. To her four-year-old self the naming of a pitch was as easy as naming a color. It did give her a good start in the Suzuki and later Yamaha piano classes in which her parents enrolled her.  These were the first music opportunities placed before her and she grabbed on.

She progressed to private piano lessons at age seven with Jill Gambill, who for the next ten years not only taught her the rudiments at the keyboard but opened up a much wider world of sound. Gambill exposed her young student to the oboe and clarinet, which Naomi played for three years, and violin which she tried on for a year or so. The joy of the instruments extended into her home where she played duets with her sisters, Jessica and Katy. And Naomi sang.

Music educator and conductor Roberta Q. Jackson recalls that Naomi showed early talent in not only singing but at piano accompanying. “She had wonderful skills but she also had the musicianship,” said Jackson in recent phone conversation with OAW.  “The way she interpreted the music, not just playing the notes. And she followed the conductor.” Confidence? “She was confident, but in herself,” recalls Jackson. “She didn’t flaunt it.” 

It was 1989 and Jackson was founding the Portland Symphonic Girlchoir, which she still co-directs with Debra D. Burgess. Naomi joined PSG as a second soprano and experienced what she described as a pivotal moment in her young musical life.

In a December 1990 Oregonian music preview, David Stabler wrote “Ceremony of Carols is reason enough to attend this Christmas concert by girls between the ages of 10 and 16. Britten’s music is simple yet effective, and so vivid, it lingers in the ear for days afterward.” 

It lingered for Naomi. Her memory of the Britten’s music, of the harp played by Elaine Seeley and – ah, ha – singing a solo role, is still vivid. She counts it as her first experience performing real classical music. Naomi also sang in a combined Girlchoir/Portland Symphonic Choir performance of Handel’s Judas Maccabeus conducted by Bruce Browne. 

As she honed her keyboard technique – and more – with Gambill she enjoyed singing in Beaverton’s Sunset High choir – she was choir president – and playing in the pit for their musical productions. And she took advantage of local concert opportunities, including one after which she heard herself give voice to her future.

The performing ensemble was Choral Cross Ties, one of Portland’s early professional choirs. On the program was the public premiere of the now beloved Chansons des Roses by Morten Lauridsen, who was in the audience. At the piano was Carol Rich, gifted pianist and accompanist. “I want to do what Carol Rich does,” Naomi proclaimed to her seventeen-year-old self.

As she relayed the story I debated whether to tell her that I sang in that performance and I understood why it remains a special memory for her. But when I did she gleefully ran to her piano and we shared a few verses of the “Dirait Ton.” Sharing the joy. A snapshot of Naomi.

But as a UPS freshman “attempting,” she laughed, “to give in to the practical” she set aside her memory of  “being Carol.” And then she walked into instructor Tanya Stambuk’s piano studio. 

The former UPS instructor was pleased to talk about Naomi in recent phone conversation with OAW from her home in Gig Harbor where she maintains a private piano studio. 

“Naomi, like all young people starting at university was really excited, trying to figure out what to do in life. In her lessons she had this innate musical ability and love for what she was doing. She really was able to absorb everything given to her. I always looked forward to my lessons with her; she was very excited about taking on the demanding.”

Stambuk believed Naomi had the talent and the temperament for a life in music and on one particular day, Naomi recalls, offered these words: “I think you could do this.”  

Naomi graduated from University of Puget Sound with a piano performance degree and went on to receive her classical performance master’s at Portland State University where she studied with Harold Gray. 

And she began figuring out what “this” was going to look like.

The sun was high in the sky at this point in our conversation. Earlier that morning Naomi had picked what looked to be about five pounds of green beans from her edibles garden, but she thought we might find some ripe everbearing raspberries on the canes. Joy allowed as how that was a great idea and dashed out the back door to find her ball. 

Enjoying an active outdoor life – hiking the wilderness, running the backroads, gardening and keeping Joy and herself fit – is still important in Naomi’s life. But there wasn’t always time to find a balance.

A freelance hustle

After Naomi graduated she launched a freelance accompanying career. “Full-time accompanying can be a real hustle,” she said with a sigh. She was in constant motion going from job to job, searching for work. Studio accompanying, solo/ensemble and recitals. All sorts of music, all sorts of musicians. 

She was also getting more solo gigs. She has a tremendous gift for covering jazz tunes, oldies–just about any song request–and even before age 21 was gigging at the Benson Hotel and in the Heathman lounge. She was learning the “business” and so by handing out cards and via the latter day “hey there’s a lady playing jazz at the hotel” media mechanism found yet another avenue of solo freelancing – private events. She laughed as she told of the “binders and binders” of themed-based music – retirements, graduations, anniversaries and even funerals – but wedding music, she said, widening her hands to illustrate, needed a binder all its own.

When a Portland choral accompanying position opened in 2004 she leapt at the opportunity.  She remembers her audition with Oregon Repertory Singers’s longtime director Gil Seeley well. “I knew this accompanying gig would be a huge thing to land and was so nervous. The choir was learning the Mozart Requiem; I did my absolute best to play everything a conductor would need to hear from the orchestral score.” Smooth landing. Naomi has been the ORS accompanist for two decades.

She started a family in those first ORS years. Freelancing, she knew, needed to support life’s practicalities. She gave her all to ORS, not wanting to mess that up, and remembers one day when conductor Seeley addressed her pointedly. The choir was performing an expansive concert of opera choruses, varied and challenging music. Naomi thought she had prepared well for the challenging repertoire. “You know what you are?” asked Seeley. Naomi tensed. “You’re unflappable!”

Current ORS Artistic Director Ethan Sperry agrees with his predecessor. He has worked with Naomi since he assumed the ORS directorship in 2011:

“She is superb as an accompanist. Some things she can do effortlessly. She recently had the open score to Mendelssohn’s Lobegesang plucked down in front of her and just started playing. Later at that rehearsal in another score when she came to a viola solo (in alto clef) it gave her pause…she took a few moments, thought it through, and then was ready. Naomi is game for everything. One of my professor’s sayings was ‘there is no such thing as luck, there is preparedness and opportunity.’ Naomi’s been prepared every time an opportunity came along.”

The unflappable and more confident Naomi LaViolette was now teaching music classes and accompanied choirs at Clackamas Community college and was still open to gigs that came her way, like a Dolly Parton Hoot Night. Never boring. But something new was beginning to take shape. Naomi was listening to her own heart and voice. They were guiding her toward creating her own music.

In an interview for a January 2012 Oregonian article Naomi spoke of ideas –a few lines of a lyric or eight bars of melody – that would come to her in repose or on a run. Ideas that emerged from beauty or grief; ideas that might resonate with others. She prepared. She saved the inspired words and music and tucked her gig earnings away in hopes of someday recording an album. 

The opportunity to turn that hope to reality began when she connected with Dean Baskerville, well-established Portland producer and sound engineer. With Baskerville’s encouragement and frank constructive guidance she worked – and reworked – those lyrics and melodies and cut her first album of original material. The 10 songs included one of her very first creations “My Superman” which she performed at the album release show at Jimmy Mak’s in 2012. Watch that performance here:

Naomi LaViolette, the songwriter. When did this happen? Does she recall a particular moment when she was compelled to compose? Clearly.

It was while she was on a study-abroad program in Europe. She and her college classmates were finishing a tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. “I was wrecked,” she recalls, “but there was an amazing sunset over the camp.” The image that was framed in her mind – the bottom half a horror, the upper so beautiful – became words and melody to a song she titled “Sunset over Birkenau.” She recognizes now that songwriting “started as a therapeutic process. Self-reflection, self-healing.” 

“It’s authentic art. There is nothing artificial about what she is doing,” said ORS conductor Sperry. “In her compositions you are staring straight into who she is.” Naomi has premiered several of her songs and choral arrangements of her songs in Oregon Repertory Singers concerts. Listen to “Night of Silence” here.

She followed her 2012 debut album of original works with a jazzy groove release You’ve Got Me in 2013. The songs in Written for You (2017) are those she was commissioned to write for others or those she gave as gifts to loved ones, reflecting the feelings of others, healing.

The healing of one person and one family became a priority for her in 2015 when she met Steve Goodwin, whose passion for writing his own songs and playing his own music was being lost to early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Though the songs had never been written down, they were still with him and Naomi knew that she could help Steve and his family preserve the precious creations.

The physical culmination of the “Saving His Music” project is two albums of Steve Goodwin’s music. The story, which began privately, gained local and then national attention and the message of the healing power of music has touched thousands more. Read that story here; watch it here or in a CBS Sunday Morning profile here. Steve Goodwin’s family’s “Saving His Music” website is here. 

The following song, “Melancholy Flower,” was co-written by Steve and Naomi, published for SATB chorus by Santa Barbara Publishing and performed by Naomi and Oregon Repertory Singers.

Naomi reports that Steve Goodwin’s life continues today in a Portland area Alzheimer’s care center. Steve’s family decided that his piano should continue its life in Naomi’s home.

With the raspberries, and even more beans, now harvested and Joy near exhaustion, Naomi invited me into her new recording studio. It’s where she recorded her latest release “Discovering Peace” under her piano artist moniker Lucente Skye. The cozy wooden space, about the size of a generous garden shed, is her acoustic dream space, especially for her prized Yamaha YUS5 studio piano. 

She sat at the open-faced instrument and for five minutes offered me a glimpse of her creative process for solo piano. She explained how each phrase, each motif, would guide a particular meditation–as if the piano was singing. Layering melody over chords, shifting texture and moods, her songs–like this one entitled “Now“–create a landscape for “Discovering Peace”:

There are more albums and singles on her excellent website including the 2019 recording made with a few of her Oregon Symphony friends, with whom she collaborated on the Oregon Symphony Lullaby Project.  

Singers and listeners are drawn in large part to Naomi’s texts. “Gosh, I am not a poet. I’m a poetic lyricist” she proclaimed, then laughed a bit and admitted “and sometimes it’s grueling.” It is not, she explained, as simple as writing a lyric then writing a melody to fit it. Sometimes she will fight for hours to get the rhythm of the words, place them just right and “there are a lot more words in my mind than are used in my songs.” This is the craft of songwriting. 

There is also a craft in the business side of Naomi’s life. She started to learn that back in the days of wedding binders and winery gigs. It serves her well now as a self-publishing, self-promoting, self-managing artist. She publishes a newsletter regularly and posts upcoming gigs and events on her webpage. 

One of those events is coming up soon. On February 14 Naomi will appear on the Patricia Reser stage in a third collaboration with Oregon Health and Sciences University neuroscientist Larry Sherman and Portland Chamber Orchestra. The first, in 2023, was “Cupid’s arrow to the brain: The neuroscience of music and love,” also a Valentine’s Day event, which included music centered on the bliss and the “disease” of love.  Read an OAW review of that 2023 lecture/concert here. The second in 2024 was a special Mother’s Day look at the loving union of mother and child.

This year the ”love” team, plus Grammy award-winning Hopi-Nez Perce Native American flutist James Edmund Greeley and acclaimed gospel, jazz and blues singer Marilyn Keller, returns – yes, on Valentine’s Day – to remind us that “Every Brain Needs (Love) Music.” Tickets and more information are here. 

Perhaps it was the “Saving His Music” project, or the “music and love” neuroscience collaborations or her newly released “Discovering Peace” album. Something caught the eye of KQAC All Classical and Naomi was invited to participating in the station’s “Healing Notes” radio project aired this past September. You can still listen to her interview with Christa Wessel, and the other healing interviews, here.

“I have felt,” said Naomi, “like I was at the intersection of empathy and creativity.” Interestingly, her UPS piano teacher noticed both traits in Naomi decades ago. “She was very caring and has an empathy. Music can be such a healing art and in that Naomi has something to say.” Did Stambuk have an inkling about the directions Naomi would go? 

Not even Naomi knew that. “I couldn’t have said when I was a college student deciding what to do that I would be doing what I’m doing today.”  There’s a poetic lyricism to that admission.

She is grateful for the opportunities that have come her way over the years and for voices of encouragement from family, mentors and friends. Among those is her friend Morten Lauridsen who has encouraged her in life and creativity and wrote this:

“Naomi LaViolette is among the very finest musicians with whom I’ve worked during my long career. A superlative pianist and composer/arranger, Naomi is acclaimed for her musicality and is a leading figure in the artistic culture of Portland, Oregon. I am honored to be her colleague and friend.”

In the new year

Naomi has a long-term innovative project underway – she is composing companion music for 15 art works based on Northwest landscapes. And she’s excited about another upcoming event, “Song Suffragettes PNW”–“an eclectic mix of five female solo artists and a female folk trio at McMenamins Kennedy School on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2025” (media release). Find tickets and lots more information here.

As we concluded our August afternoon conversation Naomi said one of her ongoing priorities was freeing up more time for composing–including more choral works. It was a prescient comment. 

In early December she received word that her SATB piece “Racing The Moon” had won the 2024 Houston Choral Society Composition Competition. Listen here and you will understand why it is fast becoming a favorite in PNW schools. 

And later that month she received two more choral commissions. Portland Symphonic Girlchoir will have the pleasure of singing one of Naomi’s new publications later this year. And the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus has commissioned a three-part work for their annual holiday concert in 2025. Naomi is honored and thrilled.

Reuben Reynolds has been Artistic Director of the highly regarded Boston Gay Men’s Chorus for 28 years. Each year he has the pleasure of inviting a nationally known composer to write a work for BGMC’s popular Holiday program. “I think I have listened to every arrangement of ‘Silent Night’ on the internet,” laughed Reynolds in recent telephone conversation with OAW. But he is glad he found Naomi’s works and “was impressed at how she integrates today’s language. That’s important for our chorus and our stories. I imagined a way in which including cello in her music would blend so well with the men’s voices. Her work is so authentic.” He’s not yet met Naomi in person. But we can tell by that last comment that he already knows her pretty well. 

As our conversation came to an end Naomi insisted that I take home some of the beans and raspberries. Delicious, thank you. Sharing is such a natural part of who she is. In her words and music, her accompanying, her performances and in her home and her life. This is her Joy.