Music has always been a natural and necessary element in Lindsey Muir’s life as far back as the 25-year-old Connecticut singer can remember. Whether it was a string quartet performing in the Muir living room, her mother singing a Gershwin tune in the kitchen, or the sonic stream of anything from Satchmo to Sondheim wafting from the family stereo, Lindsey’s childhood home in the Litchfield Hills was alive with the sound of music.

"My mother, who founded Litchfield Performing Arts, opened our home for classical music 25 years ago. As early as I can remember—maybe I was three—Mom would no sooner tuck me in then I would sneak out of bed, down to the landing, and listen to the live music in the dark," Lindsey recalls. “Sometimes I’d be bold enough to scurry down to the bottom of the stairs where I thought nobody could see me. If I thought somebody had spotted me, I’d scurry right back up to the landing," she says.

Throughout her life and, most especially now with the July release of her debut album "You’re Nearer: Love Songs of the ‘30s and ‘40s," Lindsey is scurrying right towards the music, more than ready to be a prime time player in her own right.

No where is this clearer than in the jazz-inflected genre on her new CD that allows her to use her sweet, classically trained instrument of a voice to interpret great romantic ballads, with first-class backup from a jazz combo featuring the noted saxophonist and arranger Don Braden. Lindsey’s other simpatico all-star sidekicks are: guitarist Mark Whitfield, pianist Dave Berkman, drummer Winard Harper and bassist John Benitez. Long before the idea for the album was even conceived, Benitez, a one-man cheering section, encouraged Lindsey to make a recording of her own. Lindsey also gets a little help from her friends, trumpeter Terell Stafford (dig his warm, muted solo on "Something Happens to Me") and Brazilian drummer Rogerio Boccato, who adds Latin seasoning to a buoyant bossa rendition of "This Time the Dream’s on Me."

From conception to birth – the disc itself was a one-year project – Lindsey created and directed everything from choosing the tunes to picking the personnel, thriving on having artistic control. Best of all, she pulled off this venture with the stamina, determination and efficiency of a young Marian McPartland. Muir is a rare artist/idealist with a hands-on, pragmatic worldview, unintimidated by the drudgery-filled business-side of making an album.

Lindsey who has studied voice since she was in grammar school, has all the technical equipment--impeccable pitch, clarity of diction, silken phrasing, breath control, rhythmic ease, a pretty, pinging timbre that carries around the room, harmonic sophistication and a subtle sense of dynamics. With no strain, pain or histrionics, she projects the feeling that she’s loved, lived with, reflected on and been deeply moved by the 11 songs on her album. And her transition from classical music sounds completely natural and full of grace, a whole new preserve for her to cultivate.

Her artistic flexibility and versatility come as little surprise when you look at her biography. Born June 17, 1981, Lindsey grew up with two of her mother’s institutional creations, Litchfield Performing Arts (founded a few months before her birth) and the nationally celebrated Litchfield Jazz Festival, which marks its 10th season this summer joining the effort as a volunteer at 15.

While her music-filled environment might well explain her vocal gifts, at least partially, heredity also played a role. Besides her grandfather’s passion for songwriting, one piece of family lore suggests the distant source of Lindsey’s vocal talent may be a great-great grandmother who was believed to have been an opera singer in France.

Part of the secret of her winning personal style is that she can sound sweet and innocent, yet somehow simultaneously sophisticated and emotional, as on the title tune, "You’re Nearer," a Rodgers & Hart song from the 1940 film version of "Too Many Girls." Or she can project warmth and devotion on a classic romantic ballad like "I Wish You Love." For a change of pace, she can generate a fresh, rhythmic lilt that just won’t wilt on "You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me," an evergreen from the Broadway musical "42nd Street. " Or she can serve a delicious slice of musical impressionism, as on her savory samba version of "My Ship." Close your eyes and let your imagination sail on sunny, Caribbean waters.

On classic love songs, like "My Foolish Heart" and her moving grand finale, "That’s All," you know that, much like a seasoned performer, she has lived with her material intimately, breathing-in the basic essence of the words until she can literally make them sound like her own.

Some vocalists who tackle the increasingly popular Great American Songbook sound unconnected to the sexy poetry or slippery wit in the words, as if they’re reading the lyrics from a cue card. Not so with Lindsey who, from an initial pool of nearly 70 potential songs, diligently researched and lived with her material, winnowing the selection down to the final eleven. "I didn’t settle on a song unless it absolutely spoke to me," she says.

Her album could have remained merely a dream deferred but for its basic inspiration—Lindsey’s dramatic discovery of the ballad, "Is It Love You’re After?" written by her late grandfather, Dick Bivona for her grandmother, Victoria. A week before she graduated with a degree in music from the University of Connecticut, she and her mother, flew to Florida to be at the bedside of her dying grandmother. Victoria no longer seemed aware of her surroundings, so mother and aunt, Vicki Athens, sang to her. They sang songs Victoria had always loved-- Barbara Streisand hits, Broadway tunes, and, the far more emotionally searing and personal, "It Is Love You’re After?" Apparently, the love song reached Victoria. Before turning her head aside one last time, she responded by puckering up for a final kiss.

Lindsey, naturally overwhelmed by all this, had never heard her grandfather’s song before. She was vaguely aware her grandfather, who died 40 years ago, was not just a successful builder by day but also an amateur songwriter by night. In fact, Dick Bivona, along with filling a piano bench full of ballads and 1940s novelty tunes, also wrote "He Is Always There," a song recorded by Al Hibbler, the blind singer best-known for his stint with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The song was published, got some airplay and made Bivona a bona fide member of ASCAP, the prestigious American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

Lo, and behold, after Victoria’s death, the original sheet music for "It Is Love You’re After?" emerged from among her personal papers. For Lindsey it was like inheriting a long lost, sacred text, an artifact of her family history that bonded her to her grandparents like nothing she could have imagined. With such a powerful emotional force emanating from "It Is Love You’re After?" the grandfather’s love song became the catalyst for Lindsey’s CD, which, of course, she dedicated to her late grandmother.

Using the tune as the nucleus, she began her research, listening to her grandmother’s old recordings and discovering the repertoire of now-personal favorites like singer/pianist, Blossom Dearie. Virtually everything and everybody became her database. She tapped her mom’s encyclopedic knowledge of tunes and lyrics. “You’re Nearer," for example, a tune she has really connected with, wound up on the album thanks to a suggestion from the singer/pianist Dena DeRose. "I didn’t set out to record love songs of the 1930s and ’40s. I really set out to find music that spoke to me, and then discovered that they all happened to be love songs from the ‘30s and ‘40s," she says.

Actually, the songs she selected are ageless. Despite its self-proclamation of old-codgerdom, her version of “I’m Old Fashioned” sounds forever young but not the least bit "trendy”—a word that doesn’t exist in Lindsey’s musical lexicon or uncompromising artistry.

The album brings one family story full circle. That circle became unbroken when Lindsey, with her all-star backup, laid down seven tracks in her family’s living room, including, of course, her grandfather’s love song. Her mother, who’s not only a czarina of culture but also a queen of cuisine, cooked a delicious dinner for the hungry musicians and then they had at it. Her brother Owen, a 26-year-old pre-med student and professional recording engineer, recorded the tracks in the Muir living room during a remarkably productive, yet relaxed three-hour live session. The other tracks were recorded in a New Jersey studio.

Not surprisingly, it was the living room session that produced the romantic, sweet curtain closer. Lindsey’s pure, sensuous voice and Whitfield’s warm, dreamy guitar chords intimately embraced the harmony and melody of "That’s All," a seductive grand finale that cries out for an encore.

In yet another all-in-the family flourish, Lindsey’s cousin, Chris Athens, a mastering engineer whose work has earned him two Grammy nominations, mastered both sessions. As Lindsey sums it up: "It was a surreal experience. I said, to my mother, with disbelief, ‘Do you realize that I’m singing a song that my grandfather wrote decades ago for my grandmother, which is being recorded by your son in our living room and will later be mastered by your nephew?’ I wish my grandmother and grandfather were still alive to see all this come full circle.”

The recording marks the completion of one family story. At the same time, it celebrates a new chapter in the life of a musically awestruck little girl secretly basking in the music in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs. Now she’s grown up into a gifted, adult performer who has stepped boldly into that magic-filled living room and into the limelight of a much bigger world.