New York, NY (Top40 Charts) All throughout Isn't It Romantic, Whitmore shows her exquisite gift as a song interpreter, brightening each track with her warmly nuanced vocal style and radiant personality. Lush single/video "
I Remember You" soars with delicate percussion and luminous flute melodies and follows previous single "Sunday In New York," where Whitmore infuses every line with her palpable affection for New York City, the city where she was born, adding a sparkling vitality to
Peter Nero's valentine to the Big Apple. The track follows lead single "It Could Happen To You" featuring a stunning piano solo from award-winning pianist/conductor Tamir Hendelman, breathing an effervescent new energy into the pop standard, which hit #1 on Spotify's Sweet Jazz playlist.
On October 15th at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California at 8PM, Whitmore will revisit the "Big-Band" era with her brother Billy Grubman as they return to the Samueli stage with a newly-curated collection of great American standards. Along with their 15-piece band, conducted by John Sawoski, these two recording artists perform the best of
George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Henry Mancini.
No matter what mood she's inhabiting, each track she sings spotlights the innate musicality Whitmore first discovered as a little girl growing up in Studio City, California. Named after
Judy Garland (a friend of her grandfather, who played violin in the MGM Studio Orchestra,) Judy's first foray into the music business was singing in a
Mamas & the Papas-inspired band formed by Capitol Records. Although she'd begun to cultivate a promising career in music, Whitmore's life soon led her in entirely different directions. After marrying young and having two children, like so many, Judy had to put her dreams on hold.
From there, her family moved to Aspen, Colorado, where their closest neighbors were
Annie and
John Denver who coaxed Judy into confronting her fear of flying by inviting her to board their private plane, Windstar One. Not long after that first flight, Whitmore was determined to conquer her fear and earned her commercial pilot's license and later began working search-and-rescue missions in the Rocky Mountains-an experience that ultimately inspired her debut novel Come Fly with Me, a 2013 romantic-adventure title that hit #1 on the Amazon Kindle Bestseller List.
Also working as a theater producer and a clinical psychologist, despite having achieved tremendous success in such disparate fields, Whitmore still felt that something was undeniably missing in her life. Once again demonstrating her boundless determination, in 2014 she took her first step toward realizing her deepest lifelong dream by co-founding Act Three (a cabaret group whose journey to Carnegie Hall was chronicled in the award-winning documentary film Once Upon a Dream). A truly unstoppable creative force, within several years, she'd struck out on her own and started performing solo shows around Southern California and also joined the board of directors for the Pacific Symphony, and currently serves on the executive committee for the world-renowned orchestra.
In her live performances and recorded material alike, Whitmore hopes to instill listeners with a profound love for the timeless music that endlessly inspires her. "When people hear my new music, I'd love for them to feel a deeper appreciation for these compositions and the era they came from," Whitmore says. "The Great American Songbook is a body of work that's stood the test of time, and all of its songs deserve to be heard the way the composers intended. I feel like I'm doing my part to keep this beautiful music alive."
