Fourth-year music media and management student Gabrielle Wortman to pursue music career before applying to law school

Fourth-year music media and management student Gabrielle Wortman hears music in her head all day, even during finals. That’s exactly what happened in Wortman’s second year during her final exam on the history of rock and roll.

“Oh my God, I am about to give birth to a song, and I am stuck in a final,” Wortman said she remembers thinking. Wortman said she skipped the remaining questions, afraid she would forget the song blooming in her head if she stayed. That song became “Vagabond,” the piece she performed at Spring Sing in 2009.

Originally from New York, Wortman is a classically trained pianist, guitarist and singer whose first album, “Home Is Where the Art Is,” was nominated for a Los Angeles Music Award. She said she is considering going to law school in the future but is first giving herself one year after graduation to pursue her music career.

“It’s now or never, so I kind of felt like I jumped off a 90-foot cliff, but it’s a good 90-foot cliff to jump off,” she said.

Wortman returned to Spring Sing this year, performing the song “Machine” from her new EP, “The Voodoo.”

“Every artist says the better the audience, the better they perform. Usually, the bigger the audience, the better I play, … because I just feel more adrenaline.” Wortman said of the experience.

A student in the College Honors Program, Wortman created her major so that she could learn how to manage her music career and keep herself from being exploited musically.

Assistant vice provost of the College Honors Program G. Jennifer Wilson, who has taught Wortman and attended her concerts, said Wortman’s live performances set her apart from other musicians.

“I love the fact that she dances when she sings,” Wilson said. “She is using her whole body as a medium, not just the keyboard.”

Wilson used a line from William Butler Yeats’ poem “Among School Children” to describe Wortman’s performances.

“Can you separate the dancer from the dance?” she said, paraphrasing Yeats. “A really great piece of art does not distinguish form from content.”

Wortman’s sound has developed since her first performance at Spring Sing in 2009. In February, she traveled to New Orleans to do research for her senior thesis, which examines the state of music in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the exploitation of the city’s street musicians.

Getting to know musicians and voodoo practitioners from New Orleans inspired the title of her EP and the direction of her new songs.

“I’m inspired by that humid, swamp rock down there that’s just reeking of Mississippi Delta blues and also jazz and rock,” Wortman said. “There’s something so heavy about that city that when you walk down the streets, … it’s difficult not to soak it up.”

Wortman’s friend, fourth-year Middle Eastern and North African studies student Kate Kizer, said she believed Wortman’s desire to experiment with genres separates her music from what she hears on the radio.

“I don’t think there are a lot of women artists in the industry who sound like Gabby,” Kizer said. “She’s more reminiscent of Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell than a Taylor Swift nowadays.”

Wortman’s career is motivated by more than just a love for music. In middle school, she was a victim of sexual assault.

“Quite honestly, (music) saved me,” she said. “Especially with something like sexual assault, because you can’t form words around your experience, … so I couldn’t talk, but I could sing. And the fact that a sound can save a human being is a beautiful thing.”

She has gone on to talk publicly about the issue in hopes that, by sharing her experience, she can help other victims of sexual assault. Wilson said she believed this social awareness would work its way into Wortman’s future, no matter what happens with her music career.

“She is very committed and publicly aware, and I can imagine that at some point, … the art will not be enough. It will need to be in a social context,” Wilson said.