Academia can teach techniques, technologies, styles and marketing skills. But the one thing formal education can't teach is to communicate through art. Despite the student's willingness and the instructor's experience, when it comes to art, well, you either have it or you don't.

	Amanda Ford says she enjoys her job as assistant dean of music at Duquesne University, but she considers herself a songwriter first. Click photo for larger image.

Amanda Ford had it long before she showed up at Duquesne University --a Zelienople farmer's daughter and single mom who turned a side job teaching eurythmics into a larger role as assistant dean of music. As much as she likes her profession, however, Ford says she is and has always been a songwriter, and she proves it on a new CD that she'll showcase Friday at Club Cafe.

Through her Duquesne contacts, Ford was asked to score two WQED-TV films: One won a regional Emmy, the other won a pair of Golden Quills. Her piano scores have won collegiate prizes, and Pittsburgh Pops conductor Marvin Hamlisch premiered one of her compositions at Madison Square Garden.

"I like the instrumental scores," she says, "but with the score, I'm doing someone else's material. With a song, sometimes it might be more difficult because I'm [writing about] my own life. All of my songs are pretty much based on my life and experiences. That's sometimes a little bit scary. It's like an open book. That's a risk you have to take as a songwriter."

Bill Purse, chair of Duquesne's music technology and guitar department, helped Ford to record her songs, and Tom Kikta, director of the school's recording arts and sciences department, released the album on his indie label, Alanna Records.

Sometimes, spinoffs from academia can be technically precise and artistically flat. No so with Ford's "On Fire." As a personal songwriter, she shares enough of herself to build common ground with her audience without falling into the common trap of overly sensitive, self-involved navel gazing. Backed by a band with Duquesne ties, Ford doesn't seem content to rest in a pocket somewhere between Tori Amos and Sarah McLaughlin. She skips among multiple genres without losing a style that's witty, visually evocative and distinctive. You can't teach that.

"I've always been a bit introverted," says Ford. "Where I can really talk and say something is through a song. If I write a song that's true to my heart, it comes across. That's what I've always done with my songs."

Kikta has made the songs available. The CD is distributed nationally through his label's ties with the Allegro Corp., and on the Internet at Amazon.com. Ford's songs are posted online at several download sites, and the single, "Contagious," has landed some airplay from stations including Pittsburgh's WYEP-FM (91.3). An hourlong concert featuring Ford at the Hard Rock Cafe at Station Square is available to Pittsburgh-area Comcast cable TV subscribers free with OnDemand. Click on "Our Town," "Local Music" and "Amanda Ford."