MARNI NIXON: ‘INVISIBLE’ VOICE GAINING VISIBILITY

She looks--she certainly smiles--much the same: red-haired, optimistic, upbeat. She sings much the same repertory: the esoteric, the offbeat, the new, the American. And the pop.

But there is a difference.

Marni Nixon, a Southern Californian from birth, has now lived away from her roots for 14 years, first in Seattle, now in New York. She continues to tour--her next appearance is Monday night at South Coast Repertory, when she will be accompanied by a chamber orchestra from Orange County Pacific Symphony, conducted by Keith Clark.

However, the Nixon the public knows--the ghost-voice who sang (off-camera) for the female principals in the films of “The King and I,” “West Side Story” and “My Fair Lady,” the soprano who once hired a helicopter to transport her from gigs at the Academy Awards (at the Music Center) to Monday Evening Concerts (at the County Museum of Art)--seems more pensive, more reflective than before.

She is a grandmother now (she turned 55 on Friday), a pleasure she doesn’t hesitate to talk about with a visitor to her older daughter’s house near Universal City (the daughter is Martha, middle child of Nixon’s first marriage, to composer Ernest Gold).

And she is, by her own description, completely grown up.

“I grew up emotionally in those years in Seattle,” Nixon acknowledges, sounding just a little bit like Liza Elliott in “Lady in the Dark,” a role she has performed on stage.

“Those were wonderful years. I think I had everything at that time. I sang at the (Seattle) Opera, I had my own local television show, I toured with the (Seattle) Symphony, I appeared with the repertory acting company,” Nixon says.

“But, then, I got bored. I had been married (to Dr. F. Frederick Fenster) in my first four years there, but later, as a single person, I found I was a circus item. Everyone thought of me as a star. I couldn’t just do a part in a play--everything became a big deal. And I found I couldn’t establish the right relationships.”

Nixon, whose three children were grown by then, moved to New York in 1981.

“As a working mother in the 1960s, I always found that it was best for the family for me to remain in Los Angeles. With the children gone, I now had the flexibility to go East.”

She soon found the differences between being a working artist visible in New York City because of residence and being one who only visited there.

“I realized that information only comes out of New York--it doesn’t seep in. Wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, people in New York don’t want to know. When you’re there, you exist. Otherwise, you don’t,” she says.

Visibility in Nixon’s case has meant an engagement as a pop singer at the St. Regis, Off-Broadway appearances and proximity to her manager, Max Gershunoff, “an old friend from the Stravinsky days.”

Otherwise, her life hasn’t changed much, she says.

“I still go from place to place, singing a lot of different music.” This week, it is Aaron Copland’s eight orchestrated “Emily Dickinson” Songs and Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” on a program also including a pops group.

Next week in Portland, it is a passel of operatic arias, and another pops group. In March in Galesburg, Ill., it is a familiar French program with a new repertory entry, Ravel’s “Sherherazade.” For a recital at USC on March 29, it is a program one might call echt -Nixon: Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Gershwin and Weill.

On another level, though, her life is better, she reveals.

“How do I keep my vocal health? Well, first, I never stop reworking the voice. And my voice changes--has changed--all the time. I no longer have the high F’s and high E’s. On the other hand, what I’ve gained is more meat and more warmth. Though I remain a lyric soprano, I guess I will never be a bird-girl again.

“But vocal health is a function of general health. I do yoga, I exercise a lot, and I try, personally, to be happy. Right now, I’m personally very happy.” She talks briefly about her third marriage, which she entered into two years ago, with a fellow musician, flutist Albert Block.

“Most important, you have to practice a lot. And you have to treat yourself like an athlete. Singing is definitely an athletic activity.”