Kelley Johnson reworks standards for First Sundays series.

For jazz vocalist Kelley Johnson, the music is “the magic of a secret world, a world that is always within.”

The lyrics Johnson penned for the title track of her latest album are a kind of personal anthem she will share with Bainbridge Island on April 3, for the First Sundays performance at the Commons in Waterfront Park.

“This will no doubt be one of the great performances on Bainbridge this year,” series organizer Darden Burns said. “When I did the jazz festival a year and a half ago, the place was packed when Kelley performed, and her performance was spellbinding.”

Johnson, who at the invitation of the State Department last summer toured Central Asia with pianist/husband John Hansen, took first place in the international 2002 Jazzconnect Vocal Jazz Competition – an honor that earned her a recording session at New York’s legendary Birdland club.

It’s been a long journey from the rural isolation of upper Michigan where Johnson lived with her mother, Bainbridge Island painter Gayle Bard.

As “big city people in a small town,” Johnson and her sister entertained themselves with music and dance.

“I was a kid who fell in love with what I thought were messages in the music,” she said. “I was a storyteller. I was one of those people who, if I didn’t understand the words, I would make up my own and still sing the song.

“And I loved to dance. My sister and I used to spend hours and hours dancing in front of the mirror. My dancing was all hand gestures and storytelling. Hers was all pirouettes.”

Nearly any music was acceptable raw material. A self-confessed pre-teen “record junkie,” Johnson grew up singing along with records that ranged from Glen Campbell to “Godspell.” But the singers, songwriters, actors, comedians and dancers who rented rooms from the family began to shape her tastes.

“They were determined to get me beyond ‘Hair’ and the Osmonds,” Johnson said. “One dancer from the Joffrey Ballet said he was going to make it his personal mission to get me better music.”

Her high school years were spent in Milwaukee, something of a mecca for be-bop jazz, a city of blue-collar neighborhoods with taverns that offered musicians a choice of venues.

While she studied formally at Milwaukee’s Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, she became so immersed in the jazz scene there that when her mother relocated to Puget Sound, Johnson only lasted six months in the Pacific Northwest, returning, at age 18, to Milwaukee.

The music was the draw, but Johnson also had had to find her niche in a scene constructed, in some respects, like a secret society. Black ownership of the be-bop idiom was unassailable, Johnson says, and any white person knocking on the door had to be clear about his or her intentions.

“You were expected to have a belief system that fit the belief system of those musicians if you were going to learn from them,” she said. “You had to prove yourself – that you were not a serious music student, but a serious student of jazz – and the social reality that came with that music for black people in that milieu. (And) that that history and heritage would be respected.”

Allegiance wasn’t just tested on a theoretical plane; Johnson had to stand up to “cutting sessions,” jams during which established musicians would use such intimidation tactics as drowning out or “playing over the head” – that is, above the ability – of the hopeful newcomer, to winnow out the dilettante and the untalented.

“I loved it (and) I had a lot of respect for it,” Johnson said. “I thought (the culture) was fascinating and rich, and I was just crazy about the music.”

She also recognized how much she had to learn. First, she paid dues singing “lots of jazz” with weekend bands, performing for weddings and the like.

It was only after she moved to Seattle in 1988 that Johnson aspired to a full-time jazz vocalist’s career.

“I was sitting in the midst of a pile of choices for my life (at age 26),” she said. “Do I want to be a teacher, do I want to be a therapist? What am I supposed to do? I finally said, ‘I think I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Maybe I just need to believe I can do it.’”

She found a mentor in renowned Port Townsend jazz singer Mike Murphy.

Recognition followed; she released two albums and has a third in the works.

She was named “Best Northwest Jazz Vocalist” by Earshot Jazz for arrangements and meticulous phrasing that breathe new life into standards ranging from “The Nearness of You” to “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?”

“I do a lot of arranging,” Johnson said. “I take a lot of old songs and I restructure them harmonically and rhythmically so that there (are) a lot of surprises for people who know the material.”

Her own lyrics “tell story” in new songs, and it’s a particular thrill that her lyrics have become part of the repertoire for fellow performers.

The seriousness of Johnson’s immersion in jazz culture – the attitude she confirmed in the Milwaukee clubs – drove her to learn more about African American cultural history and the nexus of race and jazz through studies at the University of Washington.

Her commitment is reflected in the music.

“The music that I’m making is highly personal, it’s not a regurgitation,” she said, “but I’ve taken on the (traditional) values.”

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World within

Jazz vocalist Kelley Johnson sings with the John Hansen trio, 4 p.m. April 3. Tickets for the event at Bainbridge Commons are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors/students. For more information call 842-3380 or visit www.firstsundaysconcerts.org. For more information, see www.kelleyjohnson.com.