Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Meredith D’Ambrosio was born into a musical family in Boston, Massachusetts on March 20, 1941. She studied piano and voice from age six and ultimately studied at the Boston Museum School in 1958-59, pursuing a career in painting as well as music.
Meredith was offered the chance to tour Japan with John Coltrane but turned down the offer. Her first major recording for Spring Records didn’t happen for more than a decade later with her husband Eddie Higgins. Two more albums followed her debut recording three years later in the early Eighties for Shiah and Palo Alto Records. She has since released a dozen albums on the Sunnyside Records label from 1985 to 2006. During this period she recorded with Lee Konitz, Fred Hersch, Ben Riley, Erik Friedlander, Jay Leonhart and Gene Bertoncini among others.
She was voted in the Top Five for Talent Deserving Wider Recognition category for Female Vocalist in Down Beat International Critics Jazz Poll from 1982 to 1985 and from 1987-1991. In 1994, D’Ambrosio was the featured guest on Marian McPartland’s syndicated radio program Piano Jazz. Although she worked primarily as a jazz singer and pianist, she is also well known as a composer, lyricist, and teacher.
A respected visual artist, watercolorist, creator of eggshell mosaics and calligrapher, she took off from recording to concentrate on painting, touring, performing at festivals and teaching. She re-emerged in 2012 recording By Myself, a collection of 14 songs by the late composer Arthur Schwartz, her only album of 19 dedicated to a single composer and her solo piano accompaniment. Vocalist Meredith D’Ambrosio continues to perform, record, tour, teach and paint.
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