In my very early years, I had an interest in music. When I was too young to play an instrument, I got on my rocking horse and sang up a storm. Strangely enough, I could sing songs before I could speak.
My mom gave me piano lessons at six years old, took violin lessons at nine but it was then that I fell in love with the flute. I performed Mozart's Flute and Harp Concerto when I was twelve, but not with a symphony. I played it with two pianos with my mom and Dan Fachera who was ten years old! We performed this in many cities in Michigan where I was living at the time.
At ten years old, still playing the flute, I took up the guitar. I had a great love (and still do) for folk music from the 1960s. Joan Baez is my favorite. Singing and playing guitar became another career for me.
When I was eighteen, I played the club circuit in Boston for seven years.
I went to Berklee School of Music and recorded my first album in Boston, Cree Queen. I toured in San Francisco, New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, etc. Later I was touring so much, I moved back to my home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan and put my belongings in my parents' attic and was on the road. Canada was a wonderful country to perform in. Toronto was my home away from home, and Sylvia Tyson of the Ian and Sylvia folk duo took me under her wing.
Joan Baez became a friend and my mentor as well. I recorded two more albums Country Fresh Music, recorded in Ann Arbor, and Saddle Up, recorded in Nashville with producer Billy Arr, and recorded with Dolly Parson's studio musicians.
My first place I ever performed was the Ark Coffee House in Ann Arbor when I was twelve. Performing was from then on.
I moved to Austin, Texas (where I was born) in 1990 and opened the Pignotti Music Studio, and I still perform and devote much time to teaching and sharing what I learned all these years.