Gayla Morgan is a professional singer, composer/lyricist, producer and vocal arranger. Gayla just began an engagement as the vocal coach for Disney Cruises’ newest ship, Adventure, sailing from Singapore.

Gayla’s musical, “A Dog Story,” had an acclaimed off-Broadway run. Her singing career includes recording and touring for 5 years with the Grammy-nominated Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, a 6-member a capella singing group. Gayla’s professional life has her based in Colorado, New York City, Key West, and now, across the world.

And I was living in the Bronx at that point, and when I took the train in, got off at 50th Street and Broadway, or maybe eighth, and started walking to the theater, which was on 45th and ninth, and I looked up at the neon lights and the restaurant, and I thought, I'm part of this. And that was a magical moment for me.

Welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT podcast. I'm your host, Achim Nowak, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won't miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let's get started. I am absolutely delighted to welcome Gayla Morgan to the MY FOURTH ACT podcast. Gayla is a professional singer, composer, lyricist, producer and vocal arranger. Gayla just began an engagement as the vocal director for one of Disney cruises, newest ships, the adventure sailing from Singapore. And let me just say, as I read that that sounds incredibly sexy to me, her musical a dog story had an acclaimed off Broadway run. Gayla's multifaceted singing career includes recording and touring for five years with a Grammy nominated Western wind vocal ensemble, a six member acapella singing group. Her professional life has been based in Colorado, New York City, Key West and now, on occasion, on a cruise ship. Hi Gayla

Hi Achim. Very nice to be here. I'm so delighted

me as well, I want to get to the cruise assignment as quickly as possible. But before we go there, I always wonder, when you you know you've had this multifaceted music career when you were a young girl growing up, and mom and dad thought about, hey, Gala, what do you want to do with your life? What was on your mind

when I was very young, I started playing piano. So that's where I started singing. Was from out of my mother's womb. I was singing. I was surrounded by singing. My dad was a professional singer. I started violin in fifth grade and continued violin and piano together until I got to high school. In junior high, they gave us a test to see what we thought we wanted to be. They wanted to assess where we were headed. And in junior high, already I knew, Oh, I'm going to play in a symphony. That's what I'm going to do. So much to my surprise, the outcome of my eighth grade test was that I wanted to be a social worker. I thought, no, no. So in ninth grade, I just figured out how I could answer the test so that musician came out on top, because that's, I was sure, that's what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be. What's interesting about my life journey is that I think that eighth grade test was extremely accurate. That for me, music is about communication and changing people's lives, and so that indeed is where I've ended up, as a violinist, as a singer, as a composer, lyricist, as a producer, all of those are always geared toward, how does this impact people's lives? By communicating?

I totally get that. And I also know that making music with others, is such a communal experience, and we're going to get into some of that. But I I've known you for a couple of years, and one thing that strikes me when I got this message from you where you said, Hey, I just want you to know I'm going to be a vocal director on one of the new Disney cruise ships. I went, Wait a minute, I don't remember her ever seeing that. That's what she wanted to do. I went, that sounds really, really cool. And my stereotype, which I realized, is a charity episode, the cruise ship work. That's what the little kids in their 20s do. And you're not the kid in your 20s. So I just threw out a lot of stuff, but let's start with because this is a such a unique job. Two things I love you to talk about is one describe the job to us, first, because people might not know what it actually entails. But then, how did. Kayla Morgan, who wasn't chasing this job, end up in this job.

The job itself is training the singers that will sing live on board. There are many events that are pre recorded voices, but there are many, many singers, actors, dancers on board that will be singing live, and it will be my job to train them, make sure they're singing the right notes with the right rhythms and that reflect the characters that they are portraying. Because it's, it's a Disney cruise. So all of these will have characters that they must portray that are, in many cases, quite iconic. So that is my job is to teach all the music to the people who sing live, how I ended up there. It's interesting. A lot of my life experience as a musician has included teaching in some form. I've done private teaching, both vocal and violin privately, the years that you mentioned, where I spent primarily with Western wind the acapella group included at least four per year workshops for mainly adult amateur singers, where we met with them and trained them in acapella music, and there was a lot of adjusting spontaneously to the moment and to the person and to the personality involved in that. So I feel all of that training has really led me to being prepared for this type of position. How I actually got it is that there was somebody else in place already to do this job, and they had to drop out at the last minute because of their own scheduling conflicts, which means, and by last minute, I mean two weeks ago, at this point, at which point, the people affiliated with the adventure reached out to their circle, which included two friends of mine who are freelancers for Disney, and they thought of me. They recommended me a zoom got set up, and the rest is history.

I love the details of that. Now, because you and I had little chat before recorded, my first question was, are you going to be in the cruise cruise ship the whole time? How much the work is you cruising from Singapore, which is an amazing city. Talk to us about how that actually works, because a lot of our listeners love cruising. It's a vacation thing they love. And they might go, dang, she got herself a job on her cruise ship. Walk us to the reality of

that. Well, I did have one friend say, so are you packing all your gowns yet? And my answer to that was, I don't need gowns because I am not actually going to be on the cruise. When passengers are aboard, I will be training for about two and a half months in Canada, and then we go to Europe, pick up the boat, get on the boat and continue rehearsing as the boat is sailed from Europe to Singapore. Once it arrives in

Singapore, stop you, yeah, uh huh. You are going to be going on a cruise from Europe to Singapore with just the performers and the crew and no guests,

that's right. And the boat will be being finessed. During that time, there will be work being done on the boat as we are there, rehearsing therefore, ergo the necessity for spontaneity and the ability to punt.

Does that mean, like trying out the different menus from the restaurants and stuff like

that in my dreams? Yes, maybe would that be perfect? I am bringing one gown on the off chance that they need a test audience for some of their fine dining places.

Thank you for just a little bit that reality check. Now again, the deeper question that interests me, and I'm asking this for you, but also for our listeners. What if any like adjustments, mental, emotional adjustments did you have to make when you're doing something right now that is completely different than what was in your consciousness even six weeks ago?

I don't think of it, I guess, as adjusting. I mean, there are a lot of pragmatic and logistical adjustments that are being made, but on a deeper level, any of the biggest things that have happened in my life have been clear. Your yeses from the moment they presented themselves. Yeah, this was a moment when the confluence of events made me absolutely ready to say, oh yes. This is what I should do. Now.

I'll go on the cruise. Yes, another aspect of this journey that you're on that really spoke to me, because my sense was, I know you had a beloved dog who just passed away, and you were living in a condo in a lovely Jersey Shore community that you had been looking to sell for a while, and both of those things happened not that long ago. So in my mind, and I want to test this theory, so this is what the spiritual part of the conversation space was created for something totally different to come in. Do you see it that way? Am I misreading this or

no, you're absolutely I have sensed I moved to this Shore community out of a sense of emptiness and being lost, and the ocean has always been a place for me to calm and center, and I really needed it at that time. But that was 2021 and it took me a couple of years to get my bearings again. I started feeling in about 20, late 2022 that I was ready to move forward, and I kept trying to open doors, and none of them would open. And I felt like I have felt since then, something is going to happen that I can't see coming. I don't know what it is, and I would try this and try that, and none of them were really following through. And then I decided to go ahead and sell the condo. I came to the realization that this beautiful community had been perfect for me when I was living in New York City and visiting it when I wasn't renting it out, but that it was not a place that was good for me full time, that I needed to be in an urban environment for my own creative health, and I wasn't in a position financially to have both anymore, so I decided to sell it. It sold in February. I moved temporarily in with friends, and as you said, my beautiful little Yorkie poo, 12 years old, Kaya, very unexpectedly, had to have emergency surgery and had complications afterwards, and was still very Doing very well. The surgeon expected her to survive, and ended up not. She developed a complication that was a known risk and died really surprisingly. And I was gutted. That was a month ago and a week later, two weeks later, is when I found out about this job. And to me, there is no coincidence in any of that.

I appreciate you walking us through that you use this wonderful phrase about not here you have spoken privately about living in the question, which is a great phrase, could you just give that some more color of what it was like for you to live in the question, because we can become impatient if the question hangs for too long. What was it like to live in the question and wait?

I hated it. That's it. And if I am not good with limbo. Yeah, and so this, this was this one was particularly hard. I've had moments of limbo, certainly in my life, but this was a very long period for me, several, you know, years, literally, of really not having a clear direction. And boy, was that a struggle. For me, it's hard to keep your faith in the process. Doesn't matter if you look at your history and say, every single thing has always turned out well, for me, I need to believe it. When you're right in the middle of the gray area, it is really uncomfortable. Yeah, it's only for me once I'm past it. Now, in this moment, I can look back yeah and say, Okay, this is what was necessary to clear me out, to be ready for this, to say yes to this

job. I love the. Always clear me out. And now I when I introduced you, I mean, Jen, you've, you've done many different things as a professional musician, and I like to focus just on two for a moment, the singing part and also the composing, lyricist part and having a theater performance background myself, I know that can be the highs and lows and the highs and the lows, but if you wanted to give us a sense of like, a moment or two in your singing life where you went, Wow, yes, this is why I'm doing this. Like moments where you go, this is a gorgeous highlight. What stands out.

What comes to mind are three specific times. One is a choral moment in New York City where I was singing as part of 120 voice choir. I remember there were six soloists, so I don't remember the actual work. I thought it was the Brahms Requiem, but I've had a friend say, that's not correct. Anyway, it was with the New York Philharmonic at St John the Divine in that enormous space, and with Kurt Mazur conducting. It was breathtaking. What was happening in that space, musically, with that music. You know, it's one of those moments you when you think, yes, I'm singing high B flats, and they're ringing out with all the other women singing high B flats and the music. So moments like that, you just are so thankful that you get to experience them, because not everybody does. Yeah, a stage moment that will always be perfection for me was performing souvenir, the play with music about Florence, Foster Jenkins, yes, in Key West, and especially the last moment, which follows a lot of very fun and funny singing, but the very last moment you step out of I step out on stage and sing the guno, the Bach guno, Ave Maria, seriously and in Key West, where there's almost usually an intermission with alcohol, but it's also a beautiful, beautiful play, yeah, and you care about this woman by the end, and I would start singing that and for three minutes, however long the Song lasts, I would just hear out loud, sobbing across the audience. And that was very gratifying. And I thought this is why you train to be able to do all of the above.

Is that on your resume, I know how to make him cry. Yeah,

you know you've succeeded when. But another type of singing you mentioned earlier, and it's singing as a team, and the moments with Western wind on stage, you know, there are high moments, there are low moments, but the moments of you've had enough rehearsal, you're on a concert stage, and the audience is really paying attention, and suddenly you are no longer aware of the audience. It's the six of you inside each other's voices, heads, bodies, this mingling of spirit that happens when you've trained enough and everyone is having the same moment at the same time, and there's nothing like that. That's why I do what I do. Yeah,

no, I totally, as a former professional theater director, know those moments, and I know what you're talking about. I do have to test this as well, because you have the gift of being with this ensemble for five years. But very often, as a working musician, you go from gig to gig, or assignment to assignment, and for many because I know theater that can be the moment if the break starts along to go, why the hell am I doing this? Or can I keep going? Or you need to get a B job for a while to pay the bills. Did you have those moments ever where you questioned your ability to go on being a musician, or what you thought, Do I just do something totally different,

the first 40? Well, not 40, I guess, from from age 25 to 40, so 15 years of my adult life, I'd go for two years freelancing a. And wait waiting tables, and I can't do this anymore. And I would get a full time job, usually as a legal secretary, and I do that for two years, and I'd say, I can't do this anymore. It's crushing my soul. It was a juggling thing every two years at 40, I stopped doing that and committed to finding another way to make a living, at which time I came into freelance copy editing, which really has sustained me up to this point. But no, I've never questioned whether to go on with music. My violin professor said in college, not in a degrading way. He said, If you can do anything else, do it, yeah? He said, If you cannot do anything else, then it's a tough life, but it's the life you've gotta live. Yes, it's Yeah,

classic performer advice, and I totally get it. Let's talk about a dog story. It's not the only musical you have written. But if, if we think getting a gig as a singer can be hard, getting a musical produced, getting it workshopped, getting it funded. So if we just take a snapshot and use the dog story as a snapshot, and which had a successful run off Broadway. What do you remember most fondly about that experience? The

experience is so broad that it's hard to pick out here's one moment. It was written because a book writer that I had met while in New York City through the BMI, the Musical Theater Workshop, which I was part of. It's a it's an auditioned workshop for musical theater composer lyricists. And then Libratus, he and his partner bought a home part time in Key West, and he said, as long as I'm down here, why don't we run a show together? So he presented me with some ideas, and we wrote the show, a dog story, simply to be done in Key West at one of the theaters there. And lo and behold, we did a little reading, an equity reading down there with performers down there, couple who had who were from New York, who just happened to be there, doing other shows, and the bigger theater down there said, Sure, we'll, we'll do it, put it in their season the next year. And we were thrilled. We thought that was it. And then each of us, separately, had people come up to us and say, We want to help you. Bring this to New York. The New York experience is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I produced it with the mentorship of Ken Davenport, who is now a Tony Award winning producer, Broadway producer. At that time, he had done God the revival of god spell. He produced Alan Cumming and Macbeth on Broadway. But since then, he's skyrocketed, yeah, but he sat by my side and guided me through the process. I loved it. I loved the producing experience of organizing and bringing people together. I love rewriting. I loved having to sit through rehearsals and figure out how to solve musically, the problems and Lyrically, the problems that came up or the challenges that came up. The raising of money is hard. Yeah, I happened to be part of a community Key West that had a lot of money affiliated with it, and I was able to, with the help of a wonderful general manager who kept adjusting the budget downward, I was able to raise enough Money. The highlight of that whole experience, other than audience reaction, and it was so full of joy. But one night, I was living in the Bronx at that point, and when I took the train in, got off at 50th Street and Broadway, or maybe eighth, and started walking to the theater, which is on 45th and ninth, and I looked up at the neon lights and the restaurants and, you know, it's night time, and I thought, I'm part of this. And that was a magical moment for me, to not be outside it anymore, but to be inside that. And I carry that with me.

Yeah, beautiful. I have moments in my past where I remember performing the show at the Kennedy Center and all these things, just being on stage and looking at that audience and going, how that. How did I end up here? I'm very grateful that that moment exists. Yes, so thank you for reminding all of us of that. I You're when you sold yourself, when you sold your home, and you were living with friends, and now you're on a contract with Disney. So you're almost back to what I call a traditional showbiz gypsy life with a nice gig, which is wonderful, but as you because this is called the fourth act podcast, and sometimes it's great to ask questions that may not be an answer, but I'm curious. So when you think about who are living in the question, some cool answers presented themselves. But do you think about next year or the year after? Or are you just going with the flow? Or, how does gala think about the future?

I think, I think this, this is the answer to my question. This, this six month contract, yeah, is the answer to my question. Something new is coming. I don't know what's after, because it's a six month contract, yeah, but the fact that it's Disney has the potential to open doors, either within Disney or even outside of Disney. I truly believe that that's what is that the next chapter of my life is now beginning to be written, and it is nothing I expected. So when you say you stood at the Kennedy Center and said, How the hell did I get here? That's where I'm at with the Disney thing. You know, I had friends, and again, I want to, if it's okay with you. At this moment, I would like to thank you, because for the listeners I during the question mark time, I did something atypical for me, which was I discovered through a mutual friend, Achim, at that time, Master Mind workshops, and I discovered them, and one was called my fourth act. And I'm in the middle of a big question mark in my life, and I am over 50, so, so I thought I need to join this and that was an amazing experience that helped me very much. Out of that experience, I've kept in touch with a couple of people, including Achim, and he included me in a in a one hour offering a couple of weeks ago called building a business that will love you back. What I've learned about Achim is that even if the word business doesn't seem to fit exactly my life as a solo entrepreneur, I learned something every time from listening and I came away with a couple of things that I believe brought this to bear, one of which was, trust your friends who are in influential places, yeah? And another was basically, I'm paraphrasing here, claim your authority, yeah, which are things that I've had not to trust your friends, but claiming my own authority is something that has been a challenge for me, but because of that hour, I spoke up two weeks before this job became available to the friends who recommended me for it and said you should think about how I could fit into your business enterprises, yeah, because I have some skills that you could use. I've never said a sentence like that before, I think, in my life, but I am convinced that saying it out loud is part of why this particular opportunity came my way, and I'm so grateful to you, Achim, for you know what you bring to people. It's powerful.

Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Here's a question I ask every podcast guest, because we're all have a lot of life experience. We're stepping into new experiences. You're like a post your child for it, as you think of the future, and we realize you're going with six months now. But are there things where you go, Oh, I've always wanted to do that, but didn't have a chance, things that you still would like to do, that you. Are lurking in the back of your mind.

I want a free fall skydive that's been on the bucket list for 40 at least years. I'm not sure that this will give me the opportunity to do that. Interestingly, one of my like, Oh, I wish I could do that. Wishes on the to do list has always been to be like a lounge singer on a cruise ship. So How funny is that I would like to see, as you mentioned, there are other shows I've written. I'd like to see a dog story. I mean, one of my hopes is that a dog story will reach more audiences. It's had a few productions, but it deserves more than it's had. It's a lovely show, charming, charming. And my other shows are, one is very dramatic, full length that you know, so I'd love to see my children. My shows have moments in the sun. Yeah, I don't have many life goals that have not come to pass so far. It's amazing.

We were just reflecting a little bit on you, or you stepping maybe out of traditional comfort zones. If you had a chance to whisper some guidance and advice to younger gala not to change the course of your life, but something that you know now that you would want her to know. What would you whisper in her ear?

I tell her, you are strong. You are making the right choices. Believe in yourself,

yeah. So as we wrap up and as you are in your Disney contract, if people want to learn more about your music, your composing project, where can people go to get more information about you and your work?

Well, I have a website, personal website, and a business website, but if you go to the personal website, you can get to the business websites and all of the shows, and that's just my name. Gayla morgan.com,

yeah, Gala, spell, G, A, y, l, a, gay lamorgan.com, that's correct. I look forward to a conversation like a year from now, when I hear about all of your Disney adventures. In the meantime, have a, have a spectacular experience. Thank you going on this little magic carpet ride that you're on.

Thank you. I will, I will a whole new

world of this contest. Conversation, I really thank

you for having me. It's been a pleasure to be here.

Thanks. Bye for now. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The my for the ACT podcast. If you like what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform, and if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind page at Achim novak.com it's where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors see you there and bye for now you.