ROCK HILL, NY — It’s 7:15 p.m. on Tuesday, June 17, 2014.

Donna Singer is singing her heart out on an outdoor stage in Lincoln, NE before nearly 5,000 appreciative people. She and the Doug Richards Trio are headlining the 23rd annual Jazz in June concert series at the University of Nebraska.

And Donna knows that her life has changed.

She’s come a long way from singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” while taking piano lessons in her Mileses, NY home at the ripe old age of seven.

Since Lincoln, her career has been a whirlwind.

She’s recorded nine albums, and her songs have graced jazz radio stations in Africa, Australia and Europe, as well as North and South America.

And her 2014 record, “Destiny: Moment of Jazz,” was submitted for a Grammy nomination.

In addition, she has done shows in Paris, Switzerland, Ireland, Italy and Wales. Stateside, Singer has performed at the Metropolitan Opera Guild Recital Hall in Lincoln Center, Central Park’s Naumburg Bandshell, and the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach.

She’s sung the National Anthem at a Miami Dolphins game.

She’s also created her own record label, Emerald Baby Recording Company, LLC.

All because the late, great bass player Doug Richards told her that the tunes they’d recorded in her living room in 2011 were so much more than just demos to get work.

“We have an album,” Richards said.

It was that album—released as “Jazz in the Living Room”—that convinced Singer to go into music with no looking back. But how could she get people to hear it?

“I knew I needed a record label behind me in order to release ‘Jazz in the Living Room’ and the albums that would follow globally,” Donna says now. “Emerald Baby has handled the distribution of our music very well.”

So much so that Donna has since been recognized by Uncool, an international Artist in Residence program. She’s also a voting member of the Recording Academy, the folks who give out the Grammy Awards.

A life in music

She and her twin sister, Dawn, were raised in a family of jazz enthusiasts who listened to the music of great jazz artists like Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

“I also love Dinah Washington, Nancy Wilson and Sammy Davis Jr.,” she says. “And very early in life, Ella Fitzgerald resonated with me. I just stuck with it.”

Later, she graduated from the New York Academy of Theatrical Arts, and also studied at the Juilliard School of Music.

Then she established “Dr. Donna’s School of Song,” where budding musicians can start honing their craft. And she was a member of the National Guild of Piano Teachers—a division of the American College of Musicians—from 2006 to 2009.

From 1998 to 2004, she hosted the weekly gospel show—“Down by the River”—on WJFF FM in Sullivan County, NY.

And she performed for 15 years as the lead vocalist in the Swing Shift Orchestra, a local 17-piece big band.

But the success of “Jazz in the Living Room” made the already-busy Singer even busier.

For example, her 2012 release “Take the Day Off: Escape with Jazz” reached #20 on the College Music Journal’s jazz chart.

Her next effort, a holiday jazz collection titled “Kiss Me Beneath the Mistletoe” featured several original Christmas songs, and also reached #20 on the College Music Journal’s jazz charts.

More recently, her Christmas release “Santa Plays the Bass” topped the Roots Music Report Holiday Jazz Chart. And Donna has a new contemporary gospel song, titled “Go and Seek the Light.”

“It was written by my husband, Roy Singer, and lyricist Mitchell Uscher,” Donna explains. “I love the jazz flavor with the gospel beat of the song. We’re having fun!!”

Coming home

Her public shows in upstate New York are on Friday, August 4 and Saturday, August 5 (see box at upper left). They’re sandwiched in between gigs in Oxford, England—from which she’s recently returned—and Kansas, where she’ll be going.

In addition, she is doing a private performance at the Center for Discovery in Hurleyville on August 5. She performs at the Center every time she returns to the area, because it’s important to her to give back.

“The best piece of advice I ever received was, ‘Know your legacy, accept your past, and rejoice at the future,’” she said. “I choose joy!”

Backing her up on piano is her husband, pianist and composer Roy Singer. The rest of the band for the New York shows is made up of local talent: Kim Simons on percussion, Bill Fleck on bass and Kevin Distel on drums.

When you go, you’ll see why critic Brent Black had this to say: “Donna Singer is a first-call vocalist…with an effervescent spirit and impeccable phrasing, there is certainly no lack of talent.”

Visit Donna at www.donna-singer.com.