She Earns Good Report Card in Musical Education : Cabaret: Beth Baker, appearing at Saddleback College, says she’s still learning the classics, but critics think she’s making the grade.

“I’m actually from, I guess you’d have to say, San Jose,” confesses Beth Baker, who’s singing in the Cabaret Theatre at Saddleback College this week, “but I like to pretend I’m from San Francisco.

“Oh, San Jose’s OK. It’s actually a much bigger and a much nicer city than it thinks it is. But there seems to be a kind of attitude among the talented people there, that they really don’t plan to go anywhere. They’re content doing their music or their dancing as a kind of second job. But that’s not for me.”

In keeping with her higher ambitions, Baker’s career has been on something of a meteoric rise over the last few years. Having spent most of her 20s singing in rock bands and trying to find some focus in her life, she burst into the Bay Area’s public consciousness in 1990, at age 32, with a sparkling performance in a Foothill College production of “Funny Girl.”

“Without question,” wrote Gerald Nachman, the San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic, “the most exciting new female voice I’ve heard locally lately is Beth Baker. . . . If you shut your eyes, you heard Streisand, so perfectly did she recall La Barbra in gesture, inflection and spirit . . . but the voice is all hers.”

Since then, Baker has appeared in “The Boys From Syracuse,” “Into the Woods” and “Jerry’s Girls,” has opened for Frankie Laine and Lou Rawls and has made it to the semifinals of “Star Search.”

Last month, she starred as Sally Adams--a role written for Ethel Merman--in a Foothill College production of “Call Me Madam,” and won yet another rave from Nachman. “Baker’s clearly got the goods,” he wrote this time, “and, given the right show, such as this, easily runs with them in song upon glad song.”

But Baker says she still feels “not nearly as educated about either Broadway musicals or classic American pop songs as I’d like to be. I just saw ‘Carousel’ recently for the first time, and I still haven’t seen ‘South Pacific.’ But I’m a lot stronger with jazz, and I’ve been working hard at getting my musical education as fast as I can.”

Her shows at Saddleback are a colorful blend of material, suggesting that her musical education is proceeding very well indeed.

“I do ‘Paper Moon’ and ‘I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good),’ and ‘Am I Blue.’ Another tune I do is a wonderful new song that Barry Manilow just wrote to some old lyrics by Johnny Mercer. It’s called ‘At Last.’ And, of course, I do some things from ‘Funny Girl.’ I still love Barbra Streisand. And a couple of Sondheim numbers.”

Like many cabaret singers, Baker searches long and hard for numbers that have not been overexposed.

“You have to be careful about advice, though,” she adds. “Some people tell me I should do this song, others tell me I shouldn’t do that one. I once tried to write down some of the advice I’d gotten and I realized that if I tried to sing everything everybody said, or steer clear of what they said I shouldn’t do, I’d never do anything at all.”

The best part of singing in places like Saddleback’s Cabaret Theatre, she says, is the opportunity to perform as herself. “I guess if I really had to choose--and I hope I never have to--I like the idea of doing your own show best, because then people know who you are.

“That’s the only problem I have with doing stage musicals, that people don’t always know who you are. Especially if you’re doing a show like ‘Cats.’ ” She laughs heartily, then turns serious. “The truth is that I’m not all that interested in making money, but I really would like for people to know who I am before I die.”

The way things have been going for her lately, it’s highly doubtful that she has anything to worry about on that count--whether she chooses to be from San Jose or from San Francisco.

* Beth Baker sings in the Cabaret Theatre at Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo, tonight through Saturday night at 7:30 and 9:30 and Sunday afternoon at 3:30. Tickets: $13. Information: (714) 582-4656.