Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer and pianist. Nicknamed "Sassy" and "The Divine One", she won two Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and was nominated for a total of nine Grammy Awards. She was given an NEA Jazz Masters Award in 1989. Critic Scott Yanow wrote that she had "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century".
Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records. Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie.
Diana Jean Krall is a Canadian jazz pianist and singer known for her contralto vocals. She has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide, including over six million in the US. On December 11, 2009, Billboard magazine named her the second greatest jazz artist of the decade (2000–2009), establishing her as one of the best-selling artists of her time.
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. In 2011 Time magazine included her recording of "Take This Hammer" on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs, stating that "Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music."
Elkie Brooks is an English rock, blues and jazz singer. She was a vocalist with the bands Dada and Vinegar Joe, and later became a solo artist. She gained her biggest success in the late 1970s and 1980s, releasing 13 UK Top 75 singles, and reached the top ten with "Pearl's a Singer", "Sunshine After the Rain" and "No More the Fool" (1986). She has been nominated twice for the Brit Awards.
Fran Landesman was an American lyricist and poet. She grew up in New York City and lived for years in St. Louis, Missouri, where her husband Jay Landesman operated the Crystal Palace nightclub. One of her best-known songs is "Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most".
Richenda Antoinette de Winterstein Gillespie, known professionally as Dana Gillespie, is an English actress, singer and songwriter. Originally performing and recording in her teens, over the years Gillespie has been involved in the recording of over 70 albums, and appeared in stage productions, such as Jesus Christ Superstar, and several films. Her musical output has progressed from teen pop and folk in the early part of her career, to rock in the 1970s and, more recently, the blues.
Stacey Kent is an American jazz singer from South Orange, New Jersey.
Liane Carroll is an English vocalist, pianist and keyboardist.
Christine Tobin is an Irish vocalist and composer from Dublin who has been part of the London jazz and improvising scene since the second half of the 1980s. She has been influenced by a diverse range of singers and writers including Betty Carter, Bessie Smith, Leonard Cohen, Olivier Messiaen, Miles Davis and poets William Butler Yeats, Paul Muldoon and Eva Salzman.
Colin Harper is an Irish non-fiction author and composer.
Valerie Sybil Wilmer is a British photographer and writer specialising in jazz, gospel, blues, and British African-Caribbean music and culture. Her notable books include Jazz People (1970) and As Serious As Your Life (1977), both first published by Allison and Busby. Wilmer's autobiography, Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This: My Life in the Jazz World, was published in 1989.
Toni Harper, also known as Toni Dunlap, was an American former child singer who retired from performing at the age of 29.
Silver Pony is a studio album by American jazz singer Cassandra Wilson, released in November 2010 on Blue Note Records. A mixture of live and studio-recorded tracks, it was produced by Wilson and John Fischbach. The release includes jazz, blues and pop standards, as well as original music by Wilson and her band. Saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and singer John Legend make guest appearances.
Another Country is a studio album by singer Cassandra Wilson, featuring the guitar, songwriting and production of Italian guitarist and producer Fabrizio Sotti. The record was released on June 20, 2012 via eOne Records label.
Minor Blues is an album by pianist Kenny Barron recorded in New York in 2009 and released on the Japanese Venus label.
This Dream of You is the fifteenth studio album by Canadian singer Diana Krall, released on September 25, 2020, by Verve Records. The album spawned two singles released in August 2020.
Emma-Jean Thackray is an English jazz musician, producer, bandleader, and DJ. She was born and brought up in Leeds, West Yorkshire, and is now based in south London.
Space Walk is an album by British jazz saxophonist Don Rendell, recorded in December 1970 and released on the EMI Columbia label in 1972 as part of their Lansdowne Series. This was Rendell's final recording under the Lansdowne banner before moving to Spotlite Records. Space Walk continued Rendell's exploration of modern modal jazz and displayed the enduring influence of John Coltrane on Rendell's composition and playing.
Celebrating Mary Lou Williams–Live at Birdland New York is a live album by Trio 3, a jazz group consisting of saxophonist Oliver Lake, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. It was recorded at Birdland in New York City in August 2010, and was released in 2011 by Intakt Records. On the album, which consists solely of compositions by Mary Lou Williams, the musicians are joined by pianist Geri Allen.
