If "living well is the best revenge," as Oscar Wilde put it, then Rita di Ghent is doing it.

Upstairs at one of Canada's premiere jazz clubs, the Senator, di Ghent, singer, composer and record label owner, is busy performing material from her recent CD The Standards Sessions, Vol. 1.

For di Ghent [BFA'86] the past few years of critical recognition in jazz circles (in November 2001, Vol.1 was rated among CBC's jazz show "Afterhours" as one of its Top Ten Albums of the Month) has been worth waiting for.

Curiously, though, she hasn't always been a singer, despite her mother passing on to her a love of singing. Her father, who played accordion, tried to get di Ghent to follow in his footsteps. She refused. In frustration he tried grooming her for clarinet which she played for a while (in a marching band), but not long after she "fell hard" for the violin, she says.

It was a love affair that eventually brought her to York where she enrolled in the music program. A Canadian by birth, di Ghent grew up in Chicago and it was during those years, that she "was as happy playing classical music as transcribing Lester Young solos."

But an unidentifiable injury eventually prevented her from playing the fiddle. "I just couldn't hold it anymore. I tried every therapy. Nothing worked. Finally a friend suggested I take up singing. I was terrible at first. But I worked hard and here I am." Di Ghent is now at the forefront of what can only be described as the Great Jazz Vocal Revival which includes other Canadians such as Diana Krall.

After a childhood of deprivation ("we were so poor when we were young that we shopped for clothes at the Salvation Army before it was fashionable"), music has been something of a "I-told-you-I-could-do-it". Now after years of struggle, di Ghent says she's found financial and critical success. "I suppose my art is revenge in a way," says di Ghent, "for all the things that didn't work for me in my youth and for all those things you had to suffer...like standing out in the hall in school...not being pretty...being an outsider. This is my show, and I'm the one in control. People are coming to see me. I think maybe Oscar Wilde was right."

photo: Nadia Molinari