Maureen McGovern's recording career began in 1972 with the #1 chart-topping, Academy Award winning Gold Record, "The Morning After," from "The Poseidon Adventure." She made history in 1975 as the first singer to have recorded and introduced two Oscar nominated songs in the same year, "We May Never Love Like This Again" from "The Towering Inferno " and "Wherever Love Takes Me" from "Gold." Ms. McGovern has been called "The Stradivarius Voice. " She can glide easily from a jazzy, warm pop register into a crystalline coloratura. Her career spans recordings, concerts, the Broadway stage, films, television and radio. Ms. McGovern has been writing music since the 1970s and has most recently been focusing on children's songs. She has also established the Works of Heart Foundation, which is devoted to music and healing. She just received the "Songs from the Heart" award from the American Music Therapy Association and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

AB: Can you comment on how the songwriting process works for you?

MM:   I always write to lyrics. Marilyn and Alan Bergman always write to music, which is fascinating to me. They feel that the lyrics are on the tip of the notes much as a sculptor often feels that with an object they're sculpting, they're taking the pieces away rather than actually creating the piece. Well, that's kind of how Marilyn and Alan feel about lyric writing. Myself personally, I am inspired by lyrics, so the lyrics for me direct the song and - where the melody will go. So I work with several different lyricists.

AB:  What has motivated you to focus on children's music?

MM:   Well, in the 70's I wrote contemporary folk/pop kinds of things. I don't know, I just have an affinity for writing for children. I think at 5, I was 5 going on 50, and maybe now in my 50s I'm regressing - going back to 5. (laughs) I want to be the antidote to Barney. I feel that there's no reason that you have to write down to children. There's a book out called "I Want to Learn to Fly" in which I wrote the music and Judy Barron wrote the lyrics- it's about freeing up your imagination. I really love writing for kids. I've always performed for kids in hospitals and schools throughout the years. Kids are great -you know immediately if they like something or not.

AB:  What are your songwriting plans in the near future?

MM:   Actually, I just finished a song. There's a children's book called "Couldn't We Make a Difference" by Michele Pace Hofbauer, a writer from Connecticut whose book was sent to me last summer and I loved it. The dedication in the book was "born in the heart of every child is the power to change the world." It's a poetry book but very long. I looked through it and thought this can be condensed into a wonderful song with "born in the heart" as the chorus. I wrote to her and asked her if she would consider that. She adapted things for me, sent it, and I started writing it. I was also doing a brand new musical "Letters from 'Nam' at the time - we were in Boston and then September 11th happened and at the same time I was doing this musical I was learning "A Lion in Winter," which I did right after that so whatever concentration genes I had left in my body were gone at that point. So I had started the chorus on the song and I asked my musical director, Jeff Harris, who's a brilliant songwriter (I've recorded over a dozen of his songs) if he would finish the song since I felt it was an extremely timely message. We finished it. It's called "Born in the Heart" and I'll be recording it in February.

AB:  Sounds great.

MM:   Michele's book is available in the U.N. bookstore and through Amazon.com. It will be translated into many languages. It's really about all the children of the world learning to talk about their problems rather than acting out and fighting. It's a very peaceful song with a peace-loving message that we're hoping the children of the world can hear.

AB: Do you have a favorite songwriter?

MM:    Do I have a favorite songwriter? Wow. I'm a diehard Gershwin fanatic. He lived to be 37 or 38 years old and the astounding canon of material that he left behind... God knows what he would have created had he lived. I also love Richard Rodgers. I think Richard Rodgers is one of our greatest melody writers in the great American songbook tradition. The way he wrote with Larry Hart and the way he wrote with Hammerstein - it was like two completely different people. There was the wit and sophistication of Rodgers and Hart and then the heartfelt, passionate Americana that he wrote with Hammerstein. He was just an astounding writer. I tend to gravitate to the great American songbook but I think Marvin Hamlisch, David Shire, Sting, Mary Chapin Carpenter - there are a lot of great writers. Obviously the Paul Simons, Elton Johns, and James Taylors - from my era. But I think Sting is just a phenomenal songwriter - he bridges all genres.

AB:  You've been involved with a number of charities including the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) and have recently created the "Works of Heart Foundation." Can you tell me about this Foundation?

MM:   I have worked as one of the vice presidents of MDA and in the music and healing area for many years. I've seen how music really helps people with traumatic instances in their lives really get through to the other side. I am also working now with the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA). There are about 7,000 music therapists in the country of which I am not one. It's a certified degree where you get a music degree and then go on for another 3 years of schooling toward a degree that gives you more medical experience. However, I've worked with several music therapists in hospitals and the profound change in people that you see is just amazing. The AMTA is setting out to document these cases. There's been a lot of anecdotal proof that music and healing are correlated. But the AMTA is setting out to hold scientific studies to prove that there's a real correlation there. Obviously music is not the cure to cancer but it certainly helps the body's immune system to fight back. So the next chapter of my life is going to be devoted to the study and application of the correlation between music and healing.

Regarding the Foundation, I'm basically setting out to record a library of life - affirming positive music for preemies to seniors that could be used during surgery, recovery, chemotherapy, or for people going through particularly difficult times in their lives. In my concerts I always do something a capella and off mic in these wonderful old concert halls around the country and it's interesting because with just the sound of the pure, unadorned voice - you can feel all the molecules change in the room. Something profoundly different happens at that moment in the concert. It's not only the song and the message but the sound of the voice and the way people hear it and process it. And I think since 9-11 we see the world through different eyes and we certainly hear music through different ears. Long before 9-11 this has been in my heart and trying to guide my career more toward working in the music and healing area. So the next phase of my life is going to be involved in that. Not only with my songwriting, which will be a portion of that, but just the great breadth of material that's out there already from songwriters from Jerome Kern and Joni Mitchell. From Bach to the Beatles to whomever. There's just a wealth of material out there that people respond to in a profound way.

 AB:  There are numerous studies that actually show that music can help young children learn more.

MM:    Sure ...to be more responsive to learning, to relax. We use music to lower the heart rate, to increase the heart rate... We're all made of vibrations so melody is vibrations - you take that and a powerful thought behind it and it has a powerful effect. There's a study done in Florida involving a woman who has invented a pacifier that plays music when the babies suck on it. For preemies, it's imperative that they learn to suck so they can eat and gain weight. The preemies love the sound of music so this device teaches them to suck. And they learn to eat and go home sooner - anywhere from 5-7 weeks earlier than preemies that don't use the music pacifiers. Also, music therapy helps Alzheimer's patients. The applications are endless. It's really a wide open field. I've become a national spokesperson for the AMTA and we're going to be working on an Alzheimer's project, something for 9-11, and something for cancer patients. The cancer patients and 9-11 will also involve the children's music I write.

AB:  You've just about done it all - Broadway, recording, TV, films... what is your favorite medium in which to work?

MM:   I think my favorite thing is to be able to do them all. You know I was known as the "Disaster Theme Queen" in the `70s (laughs) and even though I'm grateful to "The Morning After" that's just a very small area (formula pop songs) of what I like to do. I'm grateful for "The Morning After" but the albums that went with it were other people's choices of formula songs. "The Morning After" is the generic "hope" song and there's a real powerful message there that I'm grateful to sing today and as long as people want to listen. But I love acting. I loved doing "The Lion in Winter," which was a straight dramatic role - no singing - it was wonderful. A very freeing experience. And I had an extraordinarily great time. But I love musical theater, I love jazz, I love classical. I do everything from a 90-minute one-woman show with just a piano to big band to symphony to jazz quartet and everything in between. So, after 30 years of travel it's not only just "what city are we in," "what show are we doing," but it keeps it fresh - it keeps you always learning and challenging yourself. And then in the meantime during all that I try to write when I can.

AB:  I guess it's good to be diverse.

MM:   Well, it's kind of a blessing and a curse. Record companies and public relations people tend to like you to do one thing because it's much easier to sell just one thing. My audience has always come to see me because they know they're going to see something diverse they're going to laugh, they're going to cry, they're going to hear great lyrics and melodies and all genres of music. Whatever all that is is what makes up Maureen McGovern.

AB:  Is there a song in your career that you've recorded that is real special to you?

MM:   Well, it's a 3-part answer. I guess the obvious song is The Morning After because I'd still be typing in Ohio (laughs) if it hadn't been for that song. That was the beginning of my career. In 1986 I recorded an album just with piano and voice with a brilliant jazz pianist arranger - Mike Renzi. And that to me although The Morning After was in 1972/3 - 1986's Another Woman in Love was really the first CD project that was really "me" - what captured what was in my heart. I'm a storyteller by nature and that album particularly captured that. So, that was 1986. In 1999, I recorded a follow-up to Another Woman In Love. After many years of other kinds of recordings people kept saying "when are we going to hear another McGovern-Renzi collaboration?" So Mike and I recorded a CD called The Pleasure of His Company, which is the follow-up to Another Woman in Love. And I was nominated for a Grammy for that particular one. I produced the album and Mike and I just picked songs on it that we absolutely loved and had always wanted to record.

AB:  Thanks so much for your time and attention, Maureen.

MM:   Thank you. Good luck to you. And keep on writing.

Ms. McGovern will be performing at the DAR Constitution Hall in D.C. on March 24 with Airmen of Note, the US. Air Force's premier Jazz ensemble. Her web site is www.maureenmcgovern.com.