QUIANA PARLER & THE LAVON STEVENS TRIO

As lead vocalist, lyricist, and composer for internationally and critically acclaimed two-time Grammy Award-winning roots music group, Ranky Tanky, Quiana Parler spent weeks at #1 on several Billboard Jazz charts. Quiana has spent over 20 years as the most sought-after vocalist in the Lowcountry. Known locally for years prior, she rose to national prominence after her success on the 2003 season of American Idol. Quiana has worked and collaborated with diverse artists and producers such as Clay Aiken, Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Bobby McFerrin, Miranda Lambert, David Foster, Walter Afanasieff and many more.

Her performances have been featured on national broadcasts like The View, NBC’s TODAY, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show, The Tyra Banks Show, and Saturday Night Live, as well as the Academy of Country Music Awards and the American Music Awards. Lavon Stevens has traveled and performed all over the country including Aspen, Colorado, Atlanta, Georgia and Orlando, Florida. The resort vacation destination of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina has been his home since 1981. He is one of the premier entertainers on Hilton Head Island. He is producing a variety of shows and recording projects including other R&B, Jazz and Gospel artists.

Cover: $10.00 ~ $15.00

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AUDREY SHAKIR QUARTET

Audrey Shakir was born into a musical family in Cleveland, Ohio – her mother was a great pianist, organist and vocal coach, and her father, whose idol was Billy Eckstine, loved to sing. She began her professional career as a pianist in a group that played the tunes of Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan and others. Eventually, Audrey started leaning towards Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, all the while adding singing to her playing talents, with the vocal influences of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Joe Williams and Jon Hendricks.

After moving to New York, she was introduced to Barry Harris, which led to numerous gigs with him. While playing the New York scene, she became a regular performer at The Village Gate and had numerous dates at Town Hall, the Apollo Theater and Tavern on the Green among many others.

She has toured with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra, including sold-out performances in New York at the Rose Theatre in Jazz At Lincoln Center, and played to sold-out audiences at the Center’s famed sister nightspot, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.

Audrey Shakir is a world-class vocalist, affectionately known as “Atlanta’s First Lady of Jazz”. She has performed with many noted jazz artists over the years in numerous clubs and concert halls throughout the United States and internationally during her successful professional career. An accomplished pianist in her own right, she has sung with small groups and with large orchestras in intimate and grand settings.

Most recently, she had a tremendously successful tour of Big Band Holidays, featuring Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra, including four sold-out shows in New York at the Rose Theatre in Jazz At Lincoln Center, and followed that date up with two evenings of sold-out shows at New York’s famed jazz nitespot, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.

She has entertained at several Jazz Festivals, notably Atlanta and Savannah, and has headlined at clubs and private events in New York and throughout the southeast.  Audrey’s CD, If You Could See Me Now, from Hot Shoe Records, has met with great critical acclaim, and she’s heading into the studio soon to record her next CD for Hot Shoe entitled Come Swing With Me, a celebration of the great vocalists of the Big Band Era.

Her Trio: Eric Jones ~ Piano | Marc Chesanow ~ Double Bass | Robert Britton Saunders ~ Drums

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The Jazz Voyager

Flying cross-country always gives me the opportunity to unplug, watch a movie and take a nap as I head for North Carolina. As a lifelong jazz listener always on the prowl to hear someone new, The Jazz Voyager’s destination is Middle C Jazz in Charlotte. It’s an intimate upscale club setting with southern charm and hospitality, with small plates and craft cocktails.

This week I will discover the talents of vocalist Veronica Swift. A fixture in the modern jazz scene she has recorded two albums that explore mu;tiple genres of music that she incorporates into her sound.

Middle C Jazz is located at 300 South Brevard Street 28202. Get more info by visiting the Jazz Calendar at https://notoriousjazz.com/event/veronica-swift

CALIFORNIA JAZZ FOUNDATION

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NOEL FREIDLINE & MARIA HOWELL

A jazz Celebration of Stevie Wonder featuring special guest Adam McKnight.

For over 35 years, Maria Howell, this petite North Carolina native, who splits her time between both the east coast and the west coast, has developed her career as a singer, actor, and voiceover artist. Her debut acting role was the choir soloist in the Oscar Nominated film, “The Color Purple”. She has gone on to appear in hit TV shows as Lifetime’s “Army Wives”, NBC’s “Revolution”, and CBS’s “Criminal Minds”. Feature films…“The Blind Side”, “Hidden Figures”, and “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”. As a song stylist, Maria has shared the musical stage with legendary artists as, Nancy Wilson, George Benson, Ray Charles, Earl Klugh, brothers Ronnie and Hubert Laws, and veteran actor/singer, Keith David.

Pianist, vocalist, writer, arranger and educator, doesn’t come close to all things Noel Freidline! As a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of North Florida, with a BA in Music, Noel has been the bandleader of The Noel Freidline Quintet for over 26 years. He has numerous recordings to his credit, and has performed at jazz festivals from the Jacksonville Jazz Festival (FL)…to the Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland)…not to mention, a 3-year stint at the world famous Bellagio in Las Vegas, as the house band, leading his NFQ, where he performed for actress Julia Robert’s surprise 35th birthday party.

Noel was named Best Jazz Musician by Charlotte Magazine in 2006 and in 2009 and was named “Best Musical Director”, by the Metrolina Theatre Association of the Carolinas. In 2011 Freidline was chosen for the Blumenthal Performing Arts Association – Center Stage Award (Charlotte, NC), in recognition of his excellence in service to the arts. And in May, 2015, Noel Freidline was inducted into the Jacksonville Jazz Hall of Fame.

 

 

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TONY HIGHTOWER

Singer/Songwriter Tony Hightower is taking up the mantle to be a bridge that ushers R&B audiences into Jazz…Real Jazz. With years of experience as a musical performer and actor with familiar roots that place him firmly within the music’s firmament, Atlanta-native Hightower is still just getting started on this benevolent turn in his journey. And he is bringing a lot of young people with him.

​His sophomore project, LEGACY, finds Hightower exploring Jazz vocal stylings from a dazzling prism of angles. The 10-song album moves confidently and assuredly from original compositions such as the soulful scat-laced “All to the Good,” the seductive Brazilian bossa nova of “Rendezvous” and the tender carnal Jarreau-esque love beg “I Need You” to swingin’ covers of Earth, Wind & Fire’s classic Skip Scarborough-penned “Can’t Hide Love,” a mean shuffle boogie groove through Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” and a smoldering upright bass accompanied tiptoe through the 1929 Andy Razaf standard “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good To You” made further famous in 1944 by one of Hightower’s greatest and earliest Jazz vocal heroes, Nat “King” Cole. That one’ll make the women wiggle.

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