Music has always been in Meghan

For as long as she can remember, Meghan Warner Denenberg loved to sing and dance. She took ballet classes as soon as she could walk with Miss Bell. When she was young she would often pretend to be Judy Garland. She remembers watching old movies staring Judy Garland, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire with her mother, dreaming of one day herself being on stage. She even taught herself how to play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by ear on her parent’s friends piano. In sixth grade she remembers being in the chorus with a wonderful music teacher and her favorite song they sang was “The Rose.” During Middle School and High School she took Jazz classes at Betsy’s Dance Studio. She loved wearing legwarmers.

One summer she took a dancing camp at Emerson College and LOVED it. There she dreamed of acting as well. It was not until college that she studied dance more formally when she got a Work-Study job assisting the Dance Director at Bridgewater State College. There she studied Jazz and Modern Dance and picked them both up quickly. She still remembers her final Jazz performance was a Bob Fosse number with hats that she nailed.

Sophomore year she transferred to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her friend’s brother was coaching crew so she decided to try a new sport. The crew workout room was across the hall from the dance studio. Often after workouts she would stop by the door and look through the window of the dance classes. The competition at UMass Amherst was a lot steeper than at Bridgewater. She never had the guts to try out for the University’s Dance Company. She did try out for the play “Chorus Line.” First there were the dance auditions. She made it through those cuts. Next were the singing auditions. Deep down she knew she could sing but had never had any formal training. She walked up to the piano and the pianist asked her, “What key would you like to sing this song in?” She had NO idea. And just then her singing aspirations fell apart. She remembers taking a few singing lessons with a vocal coach in College but not pursuing singing much after that for many years. The summer after she graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst she drove across the country and moved to San Francisco.

One day she read a very small help wanted ad in the San Francisco Chronicle for, “Ballroom Dance Instructors, No Experience Necessary.” She tried out and before she knew it she was learning the Foxtrot, Waltz, Tango, Salsa, Merengue and Rumba. She fell in love with the Latin dances. Many nights she danced the night away at Caesars Latin Palace in the Mission district of San Francisco.

In 2000 she returned to her roots and moved back to Massachusetts. In her free time she decided to take up her love of music and began taking singing lessons. She remembers doing many scales and singing exercises with that teacher and at that point she focused her singing on old Jazz Standards. A few of her favorites were “The Very Thought of You,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and “My Funny Valentine.” She would often frequent Karaoke Nights and belt out old tunes.

In 2004 she married the love of her life. During the wedding ceremony she surprised her husband and sang “You are my Hero” to him. She wanted to express to him and all of their friends and family how deeply she cared for him. There was not a dry eye in the room.

Meghan took singing lessons on and off over the next ten years but everything changed in the summer of 2017.

On May 15, 2017 Meghan was hit by a car while walking in a crosswalk in the North End of Boston. She had a severe concussion and both of her legs were run over by the front and back wheels of a SUV. She was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital where her recovery began. She could not walk and her head was swirling inside. But her voice was roaring to sing.

After just a few days in the hospital, she remembers, at times, moaning through the pain which turned into humming, singing and sometimes even screaming at the top of her lungs, in between the tears. Weeks later she began making up lyrics and melodies. Songs were beginning to form in her head and in her heart. A few months later while she was recovering at home, she called the North End Music and Performing Arts Center and asked the Director, Sherri Snow, if one of her singing teachers might be able to come to her house and give her lessons. Over the following twenty months she began writing songs about her recovery. She did not realize it at the time, but her songs were instrumental in helping her process all that her body and mind were going through, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. It took a great deal of work to recover from such a traumatic accident. The first lyric from the first song she wrote after her accident was, “I got run over by an SUV.”

The following is a quote from Meghan about her album and how music has been instrumental in her recovery, “My album Crushed is the story of my accident and the healing journey that I traveled. I wish no one trauma or tragedy in their life and it is very difficult to hear that, ‘Everything happens for a REASON.’ Life happens, how we react to our lives is what makes us each unique. I am truly grateful that my voice is my vessel guiding me through my life. Songs heal me from the inside out. I sing for me and I sing for you.”