Since her first on-stage performance more than 30 years ago, Vanessa Thomas said she doesn’t remember a time when she was not singing. She still has a cassette with her and her Mom, now deceased, singing Jesus Loves Me. It’s labeled “Vanessa, age 2.”
“I don’t think I was always confidently singing,” she said. “But I remember always singing to songs on the radio or using the big Hoover vacuum and pretending it was a microphone and stand.”
Her love of music was nurtured by adoptive parents who regularly played PBS on the family television.
“We had one TV and if I wanted to watch and Pavarotti, the opera singer, was on I could watch, or I could go in the other room and still hear it,” she said. “As white parents raising a black child, I think they recognized it was important to have a well-rounded background listening to everything.”
They also attended live performances as a family, including the traditional Singing Christmas Tree at CCCHS, Thomas said. She remembers watching Deb Wichman – who topped the tree in 1987 – and telling her parents that would be her.
“They kind of chuckled,” she said. “I was so excited. I dreamed of that day every day. I went and saw every singing Christmas Tree every single year.”
Thomas went on to top the tree not once, but twice, her junior and senior years.
“You’re supposed to be up there once because there was unrest about it,” she said. Adding that even as freshmen, her quartet was high up on the tree.
However, it was another CCCHS performance that gave Thomas her first taste of the state, That’s Entertainment.
With the encouragement of her then-choir teacher, Ken Lang, she prepared Bridge Over Troubled Water. She landed the act and sang live while playing the piano.
“The auditorium, it was a perfect moment,” she said. “The first time I went out, that’s when I knew that I would do this for the rest of my life.”
Thomas said it was the rush of being on stage, of sharing the joy of singing, that she chased ever since that moment.
“Maybe that makes me a bad person, but it does make me brave enough to get up on stage.”
Meanwhile, she took in as much music as she could take, learning at various competitions or camps, including from a Juilliard teacher. Lang and former band teacher, CL Snodgrass, taught her music theory. She performed in competitions and landed lead roles.
From there, Thomas went to K-State, but soon decided she wanted a “bigger pond” to study performance art. Unsure of her next move, she took a local job at Hardee’s. After two weeks, she received a call from a contact, asking if she wanted to work as an au pair for the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
For a year, if she wasn’t babysitting, she had free access to the opera, often attending up to seven times a week.
“I learned more in that time than I did anywhere else about singing,” she said.
Then returning to Kansas, Thomas earned a full-ride scholarship to KU, graduating in 2000. She also pursued classical singing, which can take years to perfect, she said.
“The path is long, it’s kind of like going to law school or studying to be a surgeon,” she said. “It takes as long as it takes.” Thomas studied under various professionals, allowing her voice to mature.
However, she detoured that journey after getting married and became a mother. Today her kids are 25, 24, 21, and 17.
“I had wanted to be a young parent,” she said. “Some of that has to do with me being adopted and never knowing where I came from. I had a wonderful childhood and wonderful parents, but I never knew what my birth parents looked like.”
In addition, classical training would mean repetitive roles and music, she said. While she craved the variety of different music styles. This led her not only to stay home raising her children, but to start offering music lessons to aspiring singers. Some of her former students have graduated from Julliard and made it to Broadway.
She also began performing professionally for concerts and clubs, and with orchestras, including at the Lyric Opera of KC and recording at the Nelson Atkins Museum.
It was when she was invited back to Clay Center to perform at the late Pauline Snodgrass’s 99th birthday party. A former piano teacher, Pauline was CL’s mother and wife to Wayne, half of the namesake to the Martyn-Snodgrass Auditorium in CCCHS. Thomas performed both jazz and opera styles, which caught the attention of former Tonight Show bandleader, Doc Sevrinsen.
For the next decade, she toured while singing in Doc’s variety shows. This included holiday themes, covers, and more.
“It was just a lot of variety,” she said. While she continued to sing locally and offer voice lessons while in Lawrence. One time she recalled getting a call on Wednesday and was on a plane that Friday for a Saturday show.
“That’s how my life was for about 10 years,” she said. “I had four kids, got divorced. I just made it work.”
Doc’s final show to-date was held in 2022. One of the draws, she said, was avoiding being stuck in one genre or style of music.
“I love singing, if a song speaks to me, that’s the song I want to sing,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what genre it came from. I love classical music, I love singing with an orchestra. It’s kind of the best of both worlds.”
Today, Thomas lives in Kansas City with her fiancé, a golf pro, who also acts as her manager. With her oldest in high school, she’s filling her time performing, as well as teaching part-time. Though she’s never been far from performing, even inviting her kids to the stage.
“Everybody sings, which is nice. And everybody sings well.” Recently, she shared a concert with her oldest daughter at the Upcycle Piano Shop in KC. “You kind of know you’ve made it in Kansas City when you’re asked to sing there,” she said.
From performing at Carnegie Hall, to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, to KC Sporting, and crowds of up to 40,000 people, down to tight-knit jazz clubs of a few dozen, to releasing her first solo album in 2023, Thomas said she enjoys it all.
“I don’t need that recognition of a big crowd, even though recognition is always fun. Singing for people just feels amazing. I love helping people reach their singing goals but performing is my first love. This is what I would do every day if I could.”
