NEXT March it will be 20 years since jazz singer Emma Pask got her big break at age 16, when trumpet maestro James Morrison invited her on stage at Kirrawee High School in southern Sydney, just hours after seeing her perform in the school band.

“As petrified as I was, I did it, and the rest is history,” she says. “A week after that, his manager called and I was on the road with the band.”

Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

Making the most of the high-profile hornblower’s mentorship, Emma has become a highly sought-after performer in her own right over the past decade or so and earned a huge amount of respect among jazz aficionados, including famous ones such as Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, who asked her to perform the bridal waltz at their 2006 wedding.

She’s sung with some of the world’s top orchestras and big bands, in front of massive audiences and for more than one princess – and she’s coming to Canberra this weekend to kick off Floriade.

“I am a flower fan, I have to admit,” says Emma. She also admits she’s not much good at gardening herself, but at least she’s coming to the right place to pick up some tips and, along with much of the city, she’s got her fingers crossed for sunny weather.

“Flowers, swinging jazz and sunshine? Sounds good to me.”

As well as the swing material she’s best known for, Emma says she might also throw in a couple of Latin tunes and re-worked versions of pop classics; family favourites such as Beatles songs, for a family event.

She’s sung at Floriade before, in 2008 with James Morrison, but this time it’ll just be her own quartet, which is made up of “three of the most talented jazz musicians that the country has to offer”, she says.

“There’s the great Phil Stack on bass, Tim Firth on the drums and Kevin Hunt on the piano. They’re all fantastic guys, and great musicians.”

Stack is another accomplished jazz player who will be wielding a double bass on Stage 88 this weekend, but is perhaps better known to a pop music audience if described as “the bass player from Thirsty Merc”.

In a similar way, Emma says she connected with a whole new audience who barely knew her when she decided to place herself at the mercy of the pop star judges on TV talent show “The Voice”.

“I’ve loved getting messages on Facebook and emails from people all around the country and overseas,” she says.

“A lot of them have said: ‘We’ve never heard of you before,’ and you know yourself that you’ve been slugging it out and working for 20 years but, yeah, you definitely can’t reach everyone and going on a show like that is definitely a great way of being able to reach more people, for sure.”

Some Emma Pask fans may disdain the idea of her being assessed by the likes of pop-punk Joel Madden and latin hip-shaker Ricky Martin – who ended up asking her to sing on an upcoming album – but she values the experience, and in the end it was all about getting out of her comfort zone.

Along with a busy schedule of gigs all over the place, there’s a lot else on Pask’s plate at the moment, including more than one album she’s working on for Universal Records, which signed her earlier this year.

“I’ve got to kind of put my head down and get into the studio this month, and work on some stuff for some other exciting projects we’ve got coming up, so it’s definitely not a wind-down to the end of the year, it’s a rev-up and we’ve got lots of things in the pipeline,” she says.

Emma Pask and band are performing at the ANU School of Music’s Floriade Opening Concert, 12.30pm, Saturday, September 14, on Stage 88, Commonwealth Park.