• After ‘endless false starts,’ Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Gillies is ready to officially launch her music career
• The old Victorious the star will perform a series of shows at Café Carlyle in New York this month
• “I opened the floodgates to release music, and I’m not afraid to do it anymore,” Gillies, whose new song “What You’ve Done” featuring Ferry Townes is out now, tells PEOPLE.

Lovers of Elizabeth “Liz” Gillies I have waited a long time for the music of this multi-talented performer. Now she’s ready to share it.

About a decade since the last time Gillies, 31, gave a proper solo performance, she’s gearing up to do a series of shows at Café Carlyle in New York from November 6 to 9, paving the way for a new musical era for Dynasty star, who had been looking forward to this moment for a while.

“I’ve actually always dreamed of having a show at (Café Carlyle), so when they approached me, I was so excited,” she told PEOPLE of the limited engagement from November 6 to 9. “I’m at a point in my life right now where I’m really able to focus on music, and I made that choice.”

Since Gillies launched her teenage career 13: The musical On Broadway, she continually showcased her powerful voice on television shows like Victorious, Sex, drugs, rock & roll And Dynasty. But she rarely shares original music outside of her acting projects, even if she wants to.

“My first goal was to go to Broadway,” recalls the New Jersey native, whose “first taste” of the spotlight came at the American Girl Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Then she landed a role in 13 alongside my best friend Ariana Grandewith whom she would also star in Victorious on Nickelodeon.

Fans of the teen sitcom grew to love Gillies as rebellious Jade West, as well as the character’s memorable pop songs, “Give It Up” with Grande, “Take a Hint” with her castmate. Victoria Justice and “You Don’t Know Me”, which she loved even though she listened to more theatrical and classical music herself. “A good song is a good song at the end of the day, and I think Victorious“The music was great,” she says.

After the series ended in 2013, Gillies and some of her bandmates signed to Columbia Records, and she began working on songs similar to those she performed as Jade – “not the music I wanted to make at time,” she said.

“I wanted to make singer-songwriter folk music,” explains the artist who has written and recorded “a lot of Pink, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson-type songs” at the time. “But it just didn’t quite feel authentic to me, and it didn’t feel like the right time.”

The recording contract eventually dissolved and Gillies only released music to accompany it for a while, with the help of her then-boyfriend, now husband. Michael Corcoranwhom she married in 2020. The couple collaborated on the music of Dynastybut Gillies’ dreams as a solo artist remained dormant.

“I was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to be like James Taylor And Carly Simon“, she jokes. “And it’s like, no, that’s not what’s actually going to happen. We write music together, and we’ve written a lot together, but we choose our moments. »

The duo collaborated on the music of Dynastybut Gillies’ dreams as a solo artist remained dormant. Fast forward to the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic: she hooked up with a friend Seth MacFarlane For Home Songsan album of jazz standards, and they continued the project with the 2023 holiday collection We wish you the happiest.

Together, they toured projects and performed on television, giving Gillies a taste of what it feels like to release music. “It was very exciting to be able to do them with Seth and at this level, because the musicians that he works with and the orchestra that we play with, I mean, everyone is really excellent,” she says. “But I don’t consider them My first and second albums.”

Over the years, Gillies has continually worked on music, and his stockpile of unreleased material is currently considerable. But recently, a collaboration with fellow musician Ferry Townes proved fruitful enough to share.

“The goal was to write for me, so we were writing all these songs, and I noticed that every time I recorded the demos, I was just elevating Julia’s singing to the same level as mine,” says- her about Townes, whose real name is Julia Gargano. “I was like, ‘These aren’t solo songs. These are duets.'”

In October, Gillies pulled the trigger and released “What You’ve Done,” a beautifully thoughtful, conversational, acoustic guitar-laden duet between the two singers — and she’s “so happy” to finally have original material in the world.

“I opened the floodgates to releasing music, and I’m not afraid to do it anymore,” she says, teasing more to come. “It’s not this kind of big bad wolf anymore. It makes sense to me now, it really feels like the right time, and it feels very natural. I trust the process and my feelings about it , and it was very enriching.”

It may have taken Gillies a little longer than expected to fully embrace releasing her own music, but she’s now at a point in her career where she’s able to do it on her own terms – which is also represented by his choice to perform at Café Carlyle. , a room with 100 seats. “It’s my sweet spot,” she says.

Fans planning to attend the shows can expect to hear an eclectic setlist of Gillies’ own material as well as musical theater and covers from artists like Julie London and Joni Mitchell. “The set list continues to evolve and change. For example, I just saw Joni at the (Hollywood) Bowl, and now there are three more Joni songs,” she says.

Reflecting on her long and windy musical journey, Gillies feels she’s sticking to her guns – and thinks her teenage self would be proud. “I think she would say ‘It took a while, bitch’ about the music, but she would be happy that it’s finally happening. I also think she would like this music, which makes me happy too,” a- she declared. said. “I don’t think she’d get any grades, actually.”