Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser", "Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington.
Dave Matthews Band is an American rock band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991. The band's founding members are singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews, bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer and backing vocalist Carter Beauford, violinist and backing vocalist Boyd Tinsley, and saxophonist LeRoi Moore. As of 2023, Matthews, Lessard, and Beauford are the only remaining founding members.
Lucinda Gayl Williams is an American singer-songwriter and a solo guitarist. She recorded her first two albums, Ramblin' on My Mind (1979) and Happy Woman Blues (1980), in a traditional country and blues style that received critical praise but little public or radio attention. In 1988, she released her third album, Lucinda Williams, to widespread critical acclaim. Regarded as "an Americana classic", the album also features "Passionate Kisses", a song later recorded by Mary Chapin Carpenter for her 1992 album Come On Come On, which garnered Williams her first Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1994. Known for working slowly, Williams released her fourth album, Sweet Old World, four years later in 1992. Sweet Old World was met with further critical acclaim, and was voted the 11th best album of 1992 in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of prominent music critics. Robert Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it 6th on his own year-end list, later writing that the album, as well as Lucinda Williams, were "gorgeous, flawless, brilliant".
Virginia's musical contribution to American culture has been diverse, and includes Piedmont blues, jazz, folk, brass, hip-hop, and rock and roll bands, as well as the founding origins of country music in the Bristol sessions by Appalachian Virginians.
Salli C. Terri was a singer, arranger, recording artist, and composer. Record audiences still cite Terri's "haunting" vocals, with Hi-Fi Review originally describing her as "a mezzo soprano whose velvet voice and astonishing flexibility has hardly an equal at present."
Mark O'Connor is an American fiddle player and composer whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and, was a member of three influential musical ensembles; the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs, and Strength in Numbers.
WCVE-TV is a PBS member television station in Richmond, Virginia, United States. Owned by the VPM Media Corporation, the station maintains studios and a transmitter at 23 Sesame Street in Bon Air, a suburb of Richmond.
Mya Adriene Byrne is an American singer-songwriter whose works falls mostly in the Americana vein, a combination of folk, blues and country music. Based in New York for 13 years, Byrne currently resides in Brooklyn after 8 years in the Bay and performs solo or with various bands on both coasts. In 2014, Byrne publicly announced her transgender status and transition and has continued to work as a musician and performer.
Sarah White is a singer-songwriter based in Richmond, Virginia, whose music can be roughly characterized as folk or alt-country.
WTJU is a Variety formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Charlottesville, Virginia, serving Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia. WTJU is owned and operated by University of Virginia.
Ann Marie Calhoun is an American classically trained violinist who has performed as a bluegrass and rock musician in a number of prominent acts, including Jethro Tull, Steve Vai, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band, Ringo Starr, A.R. Rahman and Mick Jagger's SuperHeavy. She has closely collaborated with Hans Zimmer on numerous film scores, including Sherlock Holmes, Interstellar, 12 Years a Slave, The Lone Ranger, The Little Prince, Man of Steel, and Captain Phillips. She is the sister of violinist Mary Simpson.
John D'earth is an American post-bop/hard bop jazz trumpeter born in Framingham, Massachusetts, who has appeared on recordings by Dave Matthews and Bruce Hornsby as well as recording a number of CDs on his own. He currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Devon Sproule is a folk and indie rock singer-songwriter and musician based in Charlottesville, Virginia. She shared the ASCAP Foundation Sammy Cahn Award for 2009 with Oren Lavie. She is married to fellow musician, and music producer, Paul Curreri.
Esperanza Emily Spalding is an American bassist, singer, songwriter, and composer. Her accolades include five Grammy Awards, a Boston Music Award, a Soul Train Music Award, and two honorary doctorates: in 2018 from her alma mater Berklee College of Music and in 2022 from CalArts.
Lauren Hoffman is an American singer-songwriter. She released her debut album Megiddo through Virgin Records in 1997 to critical praise. In 1999 Hoffman independently issued her second LP From The Blue House and an EP, A Harmless Little Kiss. Her third album Choreography was released through French record label Fargo Records in 2006 and includes her single "Broken".
Sons of Bill is a band from Charlottesville, Virginia founded by brothers Sam, Abe, and James Wilson, along with bassist Seth Green and drummer Todd Wellons. The band took their name from the Wilson brothers' father, Bill Wilson, a musician and professor of philosophical theology and Southern literature at the University of Virginia where the band initially formed. The band's album Love And Logic is their most successful to date; it was called "a classic roots-rock record for the modern age" by Rolling Stone, and "one of those delightful surprises that music so rarely springs in the age of digital access and constant, instant discovery" by British newspaper The Guardian.
Walker's Run is an acoustic bluegrass band based out of Lexington, Virginia who also play New Grass and Jazz music.
Małgorzata Babiarz, professionally known as Megitza, is a Polish singer, double bass player, and composer. She combines Polish and Eastern European folk music, Romani music and gypsy jazz with world music, Latin music, pop, worldbeat, Americana and reggae.
Structure is an album by drummer Terri Lyne Carrington on which she is joined by guitarist Adam Rogers, bassist Jimmy Haslip, and saxophonist Greg Osby. It was recorded at Castle Oaks Studio in Calabasas, California during November 2003, and was released in 2004 by the German label ACT Music.
