She remembers telling a friend when she was five that she was going to be a singer someday. Helmbrecht started playing piano when she was eight and was singing professionally at weddings by the time she was 12. She performed on oboe for six years in school concert bands, and became interested in jazz as a teenager. She made four privately recorded songs on 45s when she was 18. Helmbrecht earned bachelor's and master's degrees in speech-language pathology from Texas Tech University. While in college, she sang and recorded with the TTU Big Band, resulting in the Sea Breeze album Seein' the Light...Hearin' the Hub-tones. She supported herself in college singing in nightclubs and jazz bars. In 1994 Helmbrecht issued her debut solo recording, One for My Baby. Since relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, she has performed with the Black Market Jazz Orchestra (singing on their 1998 CD Season's Greetings), worked regularly in Northern California, and made two further solo recordings, 2001's Be Cool Be Kind and 2004's Here's to Love; the latter has only been released in Japan so far. ~ Scott Yanow