Come Fly With Me fully unites two of Judy’s greatest passions: traveling the world and continuing the legacy of the Great American Songbook. Recorded with a full orchestra at EastWest Studios in Los Angeles, the album ultimately embodies a lavish elegance, immediately enveloping the listener in its lush and soaring sound. Over the course of 12 gorgeously orchestrated tracks, the Southern California-based vocalist’s third LP offers up something of a musical travelogue, bringing her beguiling voice to timeless songs set in far-flung places all across the globe. Not only informed by the lifelong wanderlust that’s found her climbing the Great Wall of China and taking in the running of the bulls in Spain (among countless other adventures), the album draws from Whitmore’s decades of experience as a jet pilot—a journey that began thanks in part to her former neighbor, famed folk singer John Denver. The result: a body of work as transportive, illuminating, and endlessly enchanting as travel itself.
Produced, arranged, and conducted by seven-time Grammy®-nominated compose Chris Walden (Paul McCartney, Barbra Streisand, and Stevie Wonder,) Come Fly With Me serves as a stunning showcase for the sophisticated yet ineffably warm vocal work Whitmore has brought to the stage at such historic venues as Carnegie Hall. In creating the album, Whitmore also worked in close collaboration with her longtime vocal coach/mentor Peisha McPhee and pianist Josh Nelson (a musician/composer known for his work with Michael Bublé and jazz greats like John Pizzarelli), curating an eclectic track list encompassing everything from jazz standards to traditional-pop classics to early-R&B ballads.
Named after the legendary Judy Garland (a friend of her grandfather, who played violin in the MGM Studio Orchestra), Whitmore became infatuated with music as a little girl and later sang in a Mamas & Papas-inspired band formed by Capitol Records. Although she explored a number of vocational pursuits over the years—working as an independent theater producer and presiding over a regional theater company, starting her own private practice as a psychologist, authoring such titles as an illustrated retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet—Whitmore felt overwhelmingly compelled to return to her love of music. After co-founding a cabaret group called Act Three in 2014, she went on to build a bustling career as a solo performer and soon joined producer John Sawoski and Grammy®-winning composer Michael Patterson for the making of her debut album Can’t We Be Friends.
Much like her musical endeavors over the past decade, Whitmore’s foray into flying took a tremendous amount of courage. “I was always afraid to fly, but during the time I lived in Aspen I became friends with John Denver and his wife Annie, and one day they invited me to New York on their private jet,” she recalls. “Right away I realized I wanted to learn to fly too, so I signed up for flying lessons. On my first lesson I was so scared and could feel my heart pounding, but the second the plane lifted up off the ground, I was in love with flying. Every bit of fear was gone.” Along with earning her commercial pilot’s license, Whitmore eventually began working search-and-rescue missions in the Rocky Mountains, and flew her own single-engine plane all over the country. As she reflects on her years as a pilot and her path as a musical artist, Whitmore reveals that each undertaking has fulfilled her thirst for adventure. “I have a Post-It on my computer that says, ‘Do something every day that makes you nervous,’” she points out. “I believe you’ve got to keep growing and exploring and creating new meaning for yourself every day, or else life can become very stale. Learning to fly is scary; performing onstage can be scary too. But great exhilaration and satisfaction comes from doing what challenges you, and I always try to remember that.”
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