Vi on How to Become a Session Singer, From Classical to EWF (Episode 139)

Luck = preparation + opportunity.

At 19, Vi performed the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 from memory as the featured soloist with the Santa Clarita Philharmonic. Then she walked away from classical music. In Episode 139 of The Career Musician, Nomad talks with Ivana Cespedes, known as Vi (Vi Jordan), a studio vocalist and session pianist whose credits include Disney Channel's Bizaardvark, The Goldbergs, and Grammy MusiCares behind Mavis Staples and Leon Bridges.

Nomad found her through a viral cover she recorded with Verdine White and players from Earth, Wind & Fire. Her story is a great answer to the question of how to become a session singer when you never planned to be a singer at all.

A late start built on a classical foundation

Vi started piano lessons at five and grew up in a conservative, classically driven home. Learning that concerto took her a year, about 90 pages of music. When it was done, she felt her heart calling her somewhere else. At 19 she discovered jazz, gospel and soul for the first time: Stevie Wonder, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day. What shocked her was the freedom. Four players could play the same song four completely different ways.

Nomad wants anyone switching lanes to hear this. Don't think of it as starting over. Everything you did in the first direction was building the foundation for the next one. As his dad used to tell him, if you learn classical, you can play anything.

"Even mistakes, right? Mistakes all contribute to that foundation building."

Vi, 30:44

The singer who ran from singing

She sang in church choirs from 12, with a tiny, quiet soprano voice and no confidence. One solo in front of 400 people at 14 had her sweating from every pore. She swore she would never sing professionally. At 19 she started singing along with the greats in her car, joined a vocal jazz ensemble, and realized she could read better than everyone there, her rhythm was solid, and she knew what the director would say before she said it.

Her sight-reading came from years as a piano accompanist, her first and only job since 18: people put a chart in front of her and she played it on the spot. That turned into sight-singing, which became her edge in the studio, because a lot of singers can't do it. Her pianist's ear also gave her tight pitch and tight rhythm. Talent, in ETHOS terms, is the skill you have sharpened until it is reliable.

Be kind to people, because you never know

A vocal teacher Vi accompanied heard her humming along in a lesson and told her she had something, then pushed her to be confident and let go. Vi left a master's program in nutrition science, found a job at producer Scott Frankfurt's studio, and the next day was serving coffee and meeting his singers and players. Her first studio singing job, on Bizaardvark, came in the middle of that time.

"The biggest thing I usually tell people when they're coming up in their career is just to be kind to people, because you never know who's who."

Vi, 17:45

That coffee mattered. When she made her cover video, she says, the players didn't even know she could sing or play. They said yes anyway. Everything you do is an audition, including the coffee run.

Show up, even when you don't know why

Vi built her network by going places: a Monday night show, a weird event, a workshop at a studio she had never heard of. She didn't always know why she was there. Those are the places she met the people who changed her life, and some of her best jobs have come through Instagram. Nomad's rule says the same thing: get up, dress up, show up. Something is going to happen.

Know the union side of the business

Before working at the studio, Vi didn't know session singing existed, or that residuals were a thing. She explains her choice to join the union, SAG-AFTRA: good rates, residuals, and an advocate who goes after anyone who doesn't pay them. She knows a singer whose residuals took 20 years and a fight to collect. The downside is that some work goes non-union or overseas because it is cheaper.

As she understood it at the time, a singer needed one qualifying union job to become eligible, and her last-minute Disney Channel job was the one. That let her work on Knights of Swing, where she sings the low alto in a jazz trio. Nomad's advice to listeners: do your homework on union work and residuals. That is Savvy.

Relationships are the success

With her cover video passing 780,000 views organically, Vi was ready to step out as an artist, exploring classic songs with a fresh voice, including in Spanish. She is still working on jazz theory and improvisation, studying the greats like Art Tatum, and learned to love her lower register by singing along with Tori Kelly and Lalah Hathaway.

"Relationships are what carries the weight and will take you really far."

Vi, 46:16

She measures success by her relationships first. Help people, sometimes for free: play the funeral, sit in with the choir. You never know where it leads. And protect your love for the music. She skipped classical music school because she was afraid it would make her fall out of love with her piano.

The takeaway

Your first path is preparation for the next. Be kind, show up, learn the business, and keep the love for your instrument front and center. Find Vi at vocalsbyvi.com. For your own next session or audition, grab the free Audition Secrets guide.

Get the gig. Keep the gig. Build the career.

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