Gagné's return to the folk-rock music scene will be celebrated at a CD-release party in the church on Jan 8. Plans also are in the works for her to perform at the South Shore Music Club's Beale House in Kingston next spring, among other venues.

“I'm really proud of the CD, but I've learned my limitations," she said of her illness as it relates to her music. She has to take it easy some days, a restriction not easy to meet when she was part of the New York music scene.

Nowadays, though, the world she hopes to conquer is far smaller.

"I'm going to stay local for now, stay focused on New England," she said. "I will just take it one step at a time."

A classically trained musician who performed with local opera companies in upstate New York as a child and who always got the leading role in her high school's musicals in New York City, Gagné may have given up on her original dream after her illness, but she never gave up on her music. "I'm one of those people who was born musical," said ...Gagné, who majored in music at Wesleyan University, where she learned African drumming, an art form she brings to Middleborough next month for the second year in a row. "My mother loves to say I sang before I spoke," she said.

Two of her older brothers were in the professional music business, and Gagné expected to follow in their footsteps. Before getting gigs at clubs in the city, she performed her songs on the streets and in subway stations. She collected enough money to buy a Martin guitar costing several hundred dollars, she said. "I would have people standing for an hour or two listening," she said of the subway performances. "It was like a set. I worked hard."

But Gagné's musical career as a performer in New York City was cut short by the onset of her debilitating neurological troubles, which sapped the strength she needed to work long, late hours. "My story is I had to stop music for a while," she said during breakfast at a coffee shop in Plymouth recently. "But I had to come back to it." Going back to music in New York was out of the question.

Even though she had performed regularly in New York while running a busy recording studio with her husband, New York's hustle, bustle, and sensory overload exacerbated her neurological problems, said Gagné. Some days she had to muster all of her energy just to get from one room in her apartment to the next. She grieved for the loss of her big city music life, she said. "But I've never stopped singing," she said, noting that except for a two-year period, she still wrote songs as well. "I have a very positive spirit." Four-and-a-half years ago her dreams of a career in music were renewed unexpectedly when she and her family moved to Southern Massachusetts.

"When we came up here I said, ‘Don't kill yourself," Gagné said. "There's a lot of heartbreak when you are trying to make it. I said to myself, "Don't do too much, just be kind to yourself." At the Unitarian church, where she and her husband had been greeted warmly while shopping for a house in town, Gagné found the kindness and encouragement she needed to return to regular performance. The late Rev. Elizabeth Tarbox, who was the Middleborough minister before leading a congregation in Cohasset, urged her to lend her talents to the congregation. Soon Gagné was singing classical arias and organizing a church choir. "It was Elizabeth who originally made the invitation to sing," ...Gagné said.

Through her involvement with the music program at the 110-year-old church, first as a volunteer then as the first music director in charge of all music at the church, ...Gagné said, she has found renewed strength and spirituality, even though she must still manage her illness with medication and a schedule that doesn't exhaust her. Introducing music from other cultures, such as the African drumming workshops and performances next month, is part of her calling, she said.

"Part of what I've been about is Unitarian Universalism, where we have eight religions [represented] on the wall" in the church, she said. "Why should the music be by only dead white men?" The Rev. Tricia Tummino, who became minister of the Middleborough church at the same time Gagné was named music director a little more than a year ago, applauds her co-worker's musical talents. Gagné is the first "soup to nuts" music director at the church, Tummino said. "She has a superb liturgical sense, it is a gift," she continued. "Unitarian Universalism, as we understand it together, incorporates a cultural diversity that is very challenging musically. "So she's apt to have a Japanese hymn one week and spirituals another," she said. "And the hymns that she chooses, separate from anything the choir does, also are always themed to whatever the sermon will be."

Gagné's success with the church choir also is noteworthy, Tummino said. Of the 119 members in the church, close to 30 sing in the choir.

"When the choir gets up to sing, it is a huge portion of the church," the minister said. "Jeannie's brought out the talent of the congregation. That's a gift."

Gagné hopes to share that gift with the entire community.

"To me, each Sunday is great, but that is only part of it," she said. "I would love to see music going out into the community more, it's such a powerful medium."'

That's why she drew on her Wesleyan music ties to bring African drumming to her town, she said. She also hopes to start folk song circles and a concert series, based at the church but open to the whole community.

To accomplish all that she plans, Gagné said, she must draw on support from both her congregation and the community.

"I'm trying to branch out with music this year," she said. "But I can't overdo it."