ELIOT FAINE: Alexandra Tejeda Rieloff has lived her life immersed in the arts. She’s a multidisciplinary artist, with decades devoted to each craft. She’s a dancer, a choreographer, and an actor, a producer, a director, and a photographer. Now, she’s a lounge singer with residencies all over San Francisco.
ALEXANDRA TEJEDA RIELOFF: And it really started in Laney College.
FAINE: Rieloff was born in Brooklyn, New York City. But she didn’t grow up there. She often moved between the United States and her parent’s home country of Chile. The constant in her life was music. Her dad would put on Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald records, or play his guitar. Even though she grew up singing along, Rieloff didn’t think she’d end up on stage.
RIELOFF: I was a very young parent. I was 19 years old, so I’m thinking, ‘I got to get a job to support my child. So I’m going to take typing, I’m going to take shorthand.’
FAINE: She always knew that she wanted to come to the San Francisco Bay Area. When she got here, she was certain of her path. Take classes at Laney College and find a steady job as a stenographer.
RIELOFF: And then I also wanted to study anatomy and physiology. And then I thought, ‘but I want to take a couple of dance classes.’ And the dance department at Laney College was great. There were very good dance teachers. And I started taking one, two dance classes, three dance classes. You know, by my second year, I was really submerged. That was sort of like the beginning of my professional dance career. I was always a little sad that I never really fully graduated.
FAINE: But Rieloff didn’t stay in one place. She moved between the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York City, and then toured nationally – with the circus.
RIELOFF: I was living in a world that I could not have imagined, and I have a pretty vast imagination. It was an incredible experience. Eventually I went back to New York City and sort of resumed the life that I had there. I taught for many years, and, there was a point in my life where I was just exhausted. I felt like I couldn’t go out and beat the pavement anymore. There was nothing left in me. I thought, “Okay, I have to do something.” I took a huge leap of faith, I started to sing. That was when I turned 50.
RIELOFF: But it’s one thing to listen to jazz, and it’s another thing to try to sing jazz. If I had known at the time how painful it would be, I probably would have never done it.
FAINE: Rieloff said that after an experience in her youth left her silenced, she put singing on the back burner. She found the courage to perform again in the support she received from close friends. They built stages for her and encouraged her to free her voice.
RIELOFF: I know the direction that I’m going. And I was speaking about that with my bandmate and dear friend Rob Bassinette, about what we’re building here. It’s not about quantity. It’s not about speed. It’s about commitment.
FAINE: From Laney to the limelight, Rieloff found her way through passion and persistence.
RIELOFF: I almost did kind of walk away from the singing. You know, sometimes you just get disillusioned, and you have to realize, no, you just got to go back, pick yourself back up, you know, because you can still be successful at something and not have the wealth and the fame and the glamor that people associate to success.
FAINE: Reporting from San Francisco, I’m Eliot Faine.
