DeeAnne Gorman flinches a bit when I ask her about her influences. �You have to understand, before I could get up and sing on my own, I had terrible stage fright. I grew up singing in a large chorus format. This is going to lose me some jazz street cred, but in order to sing solo, I had to learn how to perform. Before I can even talk about who influenced my singing, I have to tell you that I studied Madonna to figure out how to hold myself under the spotlight.� She laughs. �I hate admitting it, but I had to learn that first.�

�Sinead O�Connor, Bjork, Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance, and above all Madonna. I just watched how they perform. They all have their own style of course, so I�m not saying that they influence my phrasing or singing style, but I learned performance by watching them.�

DeeAnne gigs around New York in both a duo, with her longtime bass player, Tal Ronen, and also with a quartet, in which they�re joined by Eldad Zvulun on piano and Yoni Halevy on drums. They play the normal jazz venues, hotel bars and the small jazz clubs dotted about town, including her annual birthday celebration at the venerated Alphabet City club, Louis 649, but DeeAnne also likes to mix it up in garage band bars such as 169 Bar on the Lower East Side.

�As far as the actual singing goes, I love listening to Jimmy Scott, Ernestine Anderson, and Abbey Lincoln. And of course Ella. But I�ve gotten as much from listening to someone like Holly Cole, who I guess some would consider more of Rock/Pop/Jazz than just a straight jazz singer. I think my style has a lot of that Cabaret sound as well. I like to swing a little bit more than your average cabaret singer, so I�m more on the jazz side of the equation, but I definitely have Cabaret influences.�

DeeAnne grew up in the south, first in Athens, GA, and then Richmond, VA where she spent her formative years singing in the church choir. �With my stage fright I loved being able to sing and yet not stand out. I loved the challenge of blending in.�

She�s come a long way from those stage fright days. �The purest jazz for me is singing with only Tal for accompaniment. I really prefer the intimacy from playing just with the bass in the smaller venues.� Her beautifully warm tone and expressive, joyful phrasing of the standards lights up clubs large and small.

It took a few years of trying out different styles before DeeAnne moved fully into the jazz world. After stints living in LA (�didn�t really like it out there�), New York (�I didn�t take advantage of the performing opportunities the first time I lived here�), Paris (�loved it, honed my performance skills there�), DeeAnne returned to New York and threw herself into her craft.

�I had done some theater work, acting and singing, in Paris, but it was more structured singing, not jazz. When I returned to New York in 2000, I took a vocal performing class with the idea of putting together a cabaret show. I ended up falling in love with the jazz that the piano player was playing. So at first I approached jazz by performing standards with different arrangements. I wasn�t fully committed. It was still a cabaret performance. But I really wanted my singing to swing more so I spent two years just woodshedding. I spent the majority of my time singing in jam sessions up in Harlem � Lenox Lounge, St. Nick�s Pub, Sunday nights at the American Legion Hall, Smoke. And after really working out a committed jazz style, I got my first break from sitting in at Orbit, a little jazz supper club in East Harlem. I got an opportunity to book my own gig there. That was my chance to put together my own band. That turned into a monthly gig.�

DeeAnne�s been singing with her own band ever since, but she still loves sitting in whenever possible. �I love going down to Arturo�s Pizzeria when my band mates have their own gig there and I�ll sit in with them, and there are great jam sessions at Cleopatra�s Needle uptown.�

She just finished a run where she held a weekly residency at Prudence Caf�, holding down their jazz brunch. You can catch DeeAnne with her quartet next Friday, February 15 at Enzo�s Jazz Room at the Whaler Bar. You can stay on top of her schedule at her website, and you can listen to some of her work on her myspace page.