The Avatar voice at home in Mallorca

Growing up
“Growing up we moved around Pennsylvania, each time to a larger town with a bigger vibe and then, when I was 19, I started at the University of Pittsburgh. But halfway through, my family got smart and decided to move south, so I decided to move all of my credits to the University of South Florida and I’ve been forever grateful. Forever beautiful as Pennsylvania is, I was very grateful to have moved to a much more relaxed Florida with beautiful weather and skies every day. I didn’t realise you could live in vacation land, so that was really big for me and that’s really where I started to get more fully into music and singing and connecting more with my creative side. I come from a very white-collar executive family, which was great for an upbringing, but Florida was fundamental for me to start shifting and moving in the direction I really wanted to go.

“I’d always loved singing, ever since I was a child. When I was small I sang in the school choir, in churches. I never had that much direction or training, I just knew that I really enjoyed singing and I would burst out with spontaneous songs or make up lyrics. My nickname as a kid was ‘boomer’ because I had a very booming voice,” Cumie explained. “In the Tampa Bay area, where I graduated, they have a very interesting department called SYCOM which is all about the early moments of electronic and experimental music and very early techno - things that were fusing, really like orchestral or symphonic music but taking it in an electric direction. So after having loaded up on business classes, Spanish and economics, towards the end of my studies I started adding all of these music credits.

“Another cool thing is that when you graduate from a university in the US, you can audit any class you like for the rest of your life and you don’t have to pay, so I did even more music classes after graduating,” she said. “So, after my self-design major in international studies, international business, economics and Spanish language - which I didn’t realise was going to be so useful in the future - I threw myself into music and the arts,” she added.

“Then I moved to New York City and that is where I met my husband, who is from Palma. I’d heard of Ibiza, this was some 21 or 22 years ago, but I wasn’t quite sure about Mallorca. So he invited me to come for a visit and the rest is history. We fell very madly in love, I went back to the States and packed up all my stuff in less than a week and moved to Mallorca in March 2004,” Cumie said.

Cool Mallorca
“I wasn’t sure how it was going to be. Coming from the US, I was used to having everything spread out, having to take the car everywhere, so I wasn’t too sure how I was going to settle on an island. But Mallorca is actually so big and it has so much infrastructure that you don’t really get that island feeling of being in a limited space. I actually feel that Mallorca has this cool mixture that you keep finding new places, new communities and people. And there is so much nature, you can get away from the tourists relatively easy,” she said.

“We did have two periods of say a total five to six years in Barcelona, but we came back full-time. I’m super settled here and we’re massive fans of Mallorca. We’ve lived all over the island, but Sa Pobla is the place for us,” she stressed. But Cumie has by no means been sitting in Mallorca twiddling her thumbs.

She has been constantly writing, producing and recording, either for herself or other artists and collaborating but admits that only about a 10th of her work has been posted on YouTube. However, that appears to have been enough for her to have been spotted and contacted by the world-famous Cirque de Soleil.

Found on YouTube
“Well, they found me online, on YouTube because they were looking for the role of the Sharman for the Avatar people, the Na’vi. The plan was to do a prequel to the first Avatar movie that came out, set some 2,000 years before the time period of the first movie, so like the history leading up the first film. It was called TORUK – The First Flight, but when they first contacted me I said no. They wanted an overtone singer, which is a niche thing - especially for women - and they wanted me but I just didn’t think it was for me. But a few months later they came back and asked if I was sure because they just couldn’t find anyone for the role.

"So then I thought ok, this has never happened before, they’ve found me twice, so I have to at least try. So I thought even though it didn’t quite speak to my soul, it was a great opportunity and I finally agreed. That was in 2015 and amazing at their headquarters in Montreal, with wonderful people who work there. One thing that really struck me was that they try to take anything people are willing to input, they’re super open to that. They want ideas and people to make their mark on the show creation process and that was very humbling,” she explained.

U2 music video
Cumie was the featured voice on the CD for TORUK, and her voice was used as pre-recorded playback throughout much of the live shows around the world. However, due to a back injury, she was unable to physically tour with all the dancing and acrobatics, but she was with Cirque du Soleil for over seven months, got her replacement settled in and cherishes every moment she spent with the world-leading company. And then, MuOM had a cameo singing appearance in the U2 music video for Song for Someone (3D virtual reality).

Cumie has also performed various times with Grammy-winner, platinum-selling artist, Carlos Núñez. She has licensed her music for Emporio Armani ads with Megan Fox and Rafael Nadal, and was invited to record voice in a movie by director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams, Amores Perros). Cumie has studied or performed with great masters like Bobby McFerrin, Baird Hersey, Dave Stringer, Akim Funk Buddha and more while performing in Mallorca and across the world.

Pregnant
“In 2017, I had the realisation that I was based in Mallorca but I was flying to Barcelona practically every week to continue with the choir, so I decided that I had to step into the unknown and focus more on solo projects and rooting down in Mallorca. We said goodbye and did three final concerts in one of the largest churches in the centre of Barcelona, which were all sold and out and beautiful, and then I came home to Mallorca and discovered I was pregnant. I thought that was incredible synchronicity, it just felt like the right time to focus on Mallorca and do fewer projects overall.

“That said, I never really stopped and this year, 2025, I’m feeling the energy and I’m feeling ready to finally get out there in a proper way, because I’ve always been recording albums, different songs, either my own or music I’ve produced for other people or collaborations. I have tonnes of stuff recorded but so little on social media. But I’ve never done a formal professional proper release, which is kind of odd considering I’m now 48 and I live for music.”

This year
“I have no official professional release, so I’m thinking right, it needs to happen this year so I’m putting all the material together so I can do a proper album launch and then I’ll come out with my first online singing and meditation course in order to have a more established online presence and reach.
“I’ve been told by my spiritual teachers that I’m a massive fish in a tiny pond, but I’ve been hiding. But I think we know when we’re ready for certain things and now I’m at the point in my life where I can feel really good about putting something out there in a more professional way,” she said.
“I’ve always been a bit grassroots but now it’s time for me to step up to the next level,” she said. “We have to listen to our own inner voice,” she added. And the mixture or fusion of music and meditation is fundamental to Cumie.

Helping people connect
“I’m passionate about helping people connect with their voice and I work with a lot of people who love singing and love music but they are petrified because they’ve been told by a loved one not to sing or they have a bad voice. So people come to me with different nerves and fears and within a matter of a few minutes that dissolves because we approach everything from a slow and meditative experience. We use simple instruments from around the world which have a beautiful texture and are relatively easy to play and we create a lot to time, space and silence around the gatherings that happen, be they a workshop, a concert, an opening at an art gallery or more hybrid events, like part-workshop part-concert.

“I’ve found that people want the experience of a concert where they feel inspired but they also want the experience of a workshop in which they feel they can participate and that it’s more about them than just a person turning up to listen to a concert. It’s more about their own personal experience. I love working with groups and helping people to connect with their own voices, get over this conditioned thought that there are singers and non singers.

“For all of us, our voice is an innate instrument and resonator, so I’ve been doing that for about 25 years and I now have my own special sequence for people coming to my events, my sound baths, which are pretty unique,” she said. And, to mark World Sound Healing Day on February 14, Cumie will be hosting and performing a sound bath in Sa Pobla, for more information contact cumie@cumie.com