Santa Rosa >> When Jude Darrin was a child, she and her sisters would sing for any guests visiting the orphanage they called home. It was her first taste of performing. Later, she stepped it up a notch and fronted her own musical group for 35 years. For 20 of those years her daughter, Camm Linden, who earned a Ph.D in music and has mastered 12 instruments, performed with the band. Linden’s son, 17-year-old Slade Patrick Darrin, caught the musical bug as well. He’s been experimenting on the piano since he was three, taking lessons since age six and playing professionally since he was nine.
You could say music is in the blood.
“It’s been pretty much a tradition with us,” said Jude Darrin. “Music is a very important part of our lives.”
Now they’re taking their music to the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts for “North Bay’s Got Talent.” The production is a spin-off of the show “America’s Got Talent” and will feature of variety of acts. Slade Darrin will be performing a ragtime number on the piano and Linden will accompany her mother on the piano as Jude Darrin sings a song by Melissa Manchester.
Jude Darrin was flipping through the newspaper when she saw an advertisement for “North Bay’s Got Talent” and called up the organizers to ask if they were interested in performers from Lakeport. When she received a positive response, she showed the ad to her daughter and grandson and they all agreed that the show would be a fun opportunity. They organized an audition and were asked to perform at both the Saturday evening show and the Sunday afternoon one.
The family is excited to be representing Lakeport during the production. They moved to town in March of this year after searching all across the west coast — Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and other parts of California. “When we made it here to Lakeport, we said, ‘This is it, this is exactly where we want to be,’” Jude Darrin recalled. “We absolutely love it.”
Since they’re relatively new to town, they haven’t logged too many performances, but new friends and acquaintances are eager to hear the family play. And with a musical history such as theirs, it’s not hard to see why.
A Nashville native, for nine years Jude Darrin sang on a CBS-affiliate music television show and she’s performed the National Anthem 25 times for major league baseball games. Cruise ships, fairs and festivals are just a few of the different venues where she’s showed off her singing chops. And she sings almost everything, from country to blues to standards. The only genre she hasn’t tried is opera.
After her doctoral studies, Linden embarked on a career creating music for European art films. She also directed and conducted the Northern California Youth Symphony for a number of years. But perhaps one of her most impressive feats was when she received the Duke Ellington Jazz Masters Award for Keyboard Excellence.
While Slade Darrin will be playing a ragtime tune this coming weekend for “North Bay’s Got Talent,” he’s well-versed in pretty much every style of piano, thanks to his lifetime of playing. As is expected, he picked up the piano because of family influence. “I mostly learned from example,” he said. “I used to watch my mother play the piano all the time … I started taking lessons and I loved it.”
So what does it look like when a nine-year-old becomes a professional musician? “It’s pretty interesting,” Slade Darrin said.
He started by calling up senior homes to ask if they were interested in having him play for the day. His music career sprouted from there. He’s since played 125 gigs, including a couple performances with a Nashville band for the TV program, “The Shotgun Variety Show.”
“I just jumped right into it, it seemed natural enough,” Darrin said. “I really loved performing for the people.”
Although he’s only 17, Darrin is already three years into his college education, taking classes online through American Public University System. He has no plans to give up the piano any time soon, but he’s not studying for a degree in music, opting rather for a Bachelors in English with a creative writing focus. It’s fitting, given Darrin’s wide range of creative interests. A few months back, he wrote a play for the Lake County Theatre Company production, “An evening of One Acts.”
Though “North Bay’s Got Talent” isn’t by any means a small show, no one seems to be battling nerves, most likely due to their extensive stage experience. “It’s just an exciting, fun thing to do,” Jude Darrin said. “We like to have fun.”
“I don’t know what nervous even means,” Slade Darrin added.
“North Bay’s Got Talent” goes on this Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts East Auditorium in Santa Rosa. Tickets are $26 for one show or $42 for both and can be purchased online at wellsfargoccenterarts.org, by phone at 546-3600 or at the box office.
Update: Correction to article: The people in this story are three generations of the same family. Please note that Camm Linden is Slade Darrin’s mother and Jude Darrin is his grandmother, however, Linden is not Jude’s daughter.
