When the 1980s arrived, a new generation of jazz singers would carry on the timeless trio of female jazz singers Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald.. The "new" jazz scene at the time, dubbed "BCD" for Dee Dee Bridgewater, Cassandra Wilson, and Dianne Reeves, was a place for inspiration, innovation, and evolution.
Today, Radio Art presents some remarkable female jazz singers, who continue to delight music fans with their distinct personalities.
• Diana Krall
Diana Krall was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada, into a musical family (on November 16, 1964). She began playing the piano when she was four years old. She began playing in a tiny jazz combo in high school. She began performing frequently at many Nanaimo restaurants when she was fifteen years old. She also spent time in Toronto studying with Don Thompson (bass/piano), a Canadian jazz legend, then relocated to the United States with the backing of the Canada Council for the Arts to complete her studies and establish her career. Ray Brown, a bass musician, took notice of her playing and introduced her to notable professors and producers. She was awarded a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston by the Vancouver Jazz Festival when she was seventeen years old. She came to Los Angeles after three terms to study with Jimmy Rowles, with whom she also learned to sing. Krall moved to New York in 1990.Elvis Costello, a British musician, is her husband.
• Madeleine Peyroux
Madeleine Peyroux is a jazz vocalist from Athens, Georgia, who was raised in New York City and Paris, France. Her vocal style has been compared to that of Billie Holiday. Madeleine resembles Ella Fitzgerald in appearance. Peyroux may sound similar to Holiday to certain listeners, but there are variances, and she has her own style of phrasing and interpretation.
Peyroux began singing when she was fifteen years old, when she came across street musicians in Paris' Latin Quarter. She became a member of the Riverboat Shufflers, which began by passing the hat around and then singing. She joined The Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band when she was sixteen, and spent two years touring Europe performing songs by Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and others, which served as the foundation for her first album, Dreamland.
Peyroux is the proud curator of nine enchanting albums and an experienced performer with sell out globe tours under her belt, thirty years after her earliest busking days.
Her atmospheric rendition of Serge Gainsborough's La Javanaise was featured in the Oscar-winning film The Shape of Water, and she has received numerous awards, including the coveted BBC International Artist of The Year award.
• Jane Monheit
She is one of the most promising jazz vocalists of her generation in the United States. (born November 3, 1977)
Monheit began singing professionally while still in high school at Connetquot High School in Oakdale, New York, on Long Island. At the age of 17, she began studying piano with Peter Eldridge at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. She placed first runner-up in the 1998 Thelonious Monk Institute Vocal Competition at the age of 20, when she was a senior.
Monheit's voice has been compared to Ella Fitzgerald's, one of her influences. Jazz standards, MGM/RKO musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s, and Brazilian rhythms like "Começar de novo" are among the songs she has recorded. Concord Records has just signed the singer to a recording deal. Surrender, her latest album, debuted at the top of Billboard's jazz chart.
• Becca Stevens
She was born into a musically inclined family (her father is a choral music composer, and her mother is a trained opera and theatre singer), and she began performing with her siblings in her family band, the Tune Mammals, at a young age. Stevens is a talented singer-songwriter who has released five solo albums as well as two band albums: Tillery (with fellow jazz artists Gretchen Parlato and Rebecca Martin) and David Crosby's Lighthouse Band. She also plays the guitar, ukulele, and charango, a Bolivian lute with ten strings.
"She has a beautifully nuanced vocal style, a delicate yet strongly assured delivery rooted in an open, broad range that is very much her own, with the mildest of echoes of one of her heroines, Joni Mitchell, that also carries through to her guitar work," London Jazz News wrote of Stevens.
• Gretchen Parlato
Gretchen Parlato is the daughter of Dave Parlato, the late Frank Zappa's bass player. She was born in Los Angeles. Parlato was affected by her mother's collection of bossa nova records as a child.
Parlato won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition in 2004, just a year after moving to New York. Quincy Jones, Flora Purim, Kurt Elling and Dee Dee Bridgewater were among the judges for the competition. Her music's attractiveness resides in its complex rhythms, which are frequently highlighted by lovely harmonies. Parlato is also adept at adding syncopated hand claps to her performances, which has become one of her defining actions.
Parlato's new album, Flor, is likely to shake up the landscape this year. Flor pays homage to her first recollections of falling in love with music as a teenager, showcasing a blend of American, European, and Brazilian elements, like a young blossom unfurling its petals.
• Karen Souza
Karen Souza's voice may sound as if it were tailor-made for jazz, but she is a relative newcomer to the genre. Her career began with her providing vocal support to a number of electronic music producers and being a part of several international house hits under various pseudonyms.
On 2009 made a tour in Brazil. Karen came into her own onstage as the visit progressed, gaining confidence and fine-tuning and refining her singing.
Following the Brazilian adventure, Karen's label intervened once more, telling her that it was time to focus on her own material.
They sent her to Los Angeles for a few months to work with and learn from some of the industry's best songwriters. She studied there under Pam Oland, a Grammy-nominated songwriter who has collaborated with artists such as Whitney Houston, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Aretha Franklin, to name a few. Karen's own composing and songwriting took a new direction during this time, and she was able to further develop her signature sound while still pleasing fans with her lush vocals.
Karen began devoting herself exclusively to rehearsing both new and older material with the rest of the quartet after her stint in LA, and they have achieved a symbiosis that is a joy to watch. The Karen Cooltrane Quartet is a must-see act, with full-fledged jazz versions and brand-new soloist material from a truly dynamic young artist.
• Irini Konstantinidi
Irini is one of the most prominent Greek jazz singers. Her vocal brilliance, impressive tonal range, and flexibility have been praised in reviews. Her audience and the press refer to her as having a crystal-clear jazz voice that is thrilling to listen to when she improvises.
Irini also enjoys writing lyrics for her own albums as well as jazz standards (mostly for Wayne Shorter's compositions), giving them a new spin with her daring phrasing and thought-provoking words. Her lyrics are based on her personal experiences and interpretations of life's meaning. Her musical inspiration comes primarily from melodies she hears while scatting on a walk. Irini can draw her musical sketches on a blank canvas created by a simple stroll that clears the mind.
In 2016, she relocated to Holland in order to pursue her dreams of broadening her horizons, expanding her network, and enhancing her academic credentials. Irini completed her Master's in Jazz Vocals at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague in 2018 during her time in the Netherlands.
She performed in numerous jazz festivals and venues in both Netherlands and Greece as a lyricist and vocalist in various jazz projects and discography with The Wonderfall Quartet in Greece and with Nomadic Treasures in Holland. Meanwhile, she began writing her own songs to showcase her refined musical personality.
She's passionate about jazz and improvisation, and she's willing to go down a path less travelled, one that leads to her deepest connection to the music and her true feelings. Her voice reflects the clarity of the Greek blue sea, her soul the lightness and subtlety of a butterfly, and her easy singing the freedom of a migrating bird.
• Cyrille Aimée
Cyrille Aimée, a French-Dominican singer, performs jazz in a very different style than the three artists we mentioned above, but her scat improvisation is second to none. Aimée grew up in the village of Samois-sur-Seine, where Gypsies flocked to the annual Django Reinhardt Jazz Festival every June. She used to sneak out late at night to meet them and learn their language as well as their version of jazz, which heavily featured the guitar as the main instrument.
"I became enamored with the Gypsy lifestyle, particularly their music." "Gypsy music reflects a sense of liberation, of living each day as if it were the last," Aimée explained.
Aimée spent many years performing with her three-guitar band, where the combination of jazz, Gypsy, and Brazilian guitars brought together all of her favorite musical instruments, and she thrived in the environment.
• Kavita Shah
Indian jazz artists have emerged as a growing community in New York in recent years, and Kavita Shah is one to watch. Her voice is comforting, like a salve for sore muscles after a long day. Shah, who was born and raised in Manhattan, began playing the classical piano at the age of five. She polished her singing skills as a member of the Young People's Chorus of New York City, where she sang in many languages and genres ranging from gospel and folk to opera.
Shah credits her love of jazz to her former neighbor, saxophonist Patience Higgins, with whom she would eventually establish a band and perform at various Harlem locations. Shah's debut album, Visions (2014), has 14 artists from all around the world, fusing ethnic themes into a modern jazz atmosphere.
Shah has exhibited an amazing knack for connecting with people, as evidenced by her collaborations with Beninois guitarist Lionel Loueke and with French jazz bass player François Moutin in their joint album, Interplay, according to the Boston Globe.
