Starr Parodi Hated Piano Lessons, but Now Plays for Fun and Profit

Starr Parodi gets busy five nights a week as the keyboardist--and only female member--of the “Posse” on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” which just celebrated its third anniversary.

But Parodi, who hails from Los Angeles, didn’t begin playing the keyboards until she was a teen-ager. “When I was a kid, my mother forced me to take piano lessons for a year,” Parodi recalls. “I hated it. She made me a promise that I only had to take piano lessons for a year and on the date of that year, I quit. I think it was partly rebelling. I didn’t want to do it because my parents wanted me to do it.”

She changed her tune at age 15, when she went to see some college friends who were in a band perform at a local club. “Afterward, I went to the keyboard player’s dorm to hang out. I was playing the keyboard, he showed me a song and I picked it up sort of fast.” Discovering she had the music in her, she began playing and composing tunes on the family piano.

“I wanted to get into music. It was the one thing I could focus on. It seems very natural to do it.”

Parodi, who studied music at the Michigan Interlochen Arts Academy and composed music for and appeared on the series “Fame,” has just released her first album, “Change,” on Gifthorse Records. The record combines the multi-format influences of jazz, R&B; and world beat.

“I like so many different kinds of music,” Parodi explains. “I grew up with R&B; and pop music and when I was a teen-ager, I started to get into jazz. I wanted to do something that reflected my love for those things.”

Parodi has been married the past five years to synthesizer programmer and composer Jeff Fair, who co-wrote and co-produced the title tune of her album. “My husband and I just did a commercial yesterday for Better Homes and Gardens,” she says. “We work together just enough not to ruin our marriage.”