I came to cabaret and musical theater songwriting relatively late in life. This might seem strange when you know that I grew up in New York (at 562 West End Ave.) with a mother who had been a big band singer in the 1930s and a father who was a prolific and successful songwriter from that time through the 1960s. (For more about them, go to ABOUT JERRY.) But my own musical and professional tastes ran in other directions for a long time. Perhaps not entirely by chance, my musical interests veered completely away from my dad's world toward classical music and from piano, on which he was highly skilled, and on which I had the obligatory lessons, to flute, which became my main performing instrument.