JOYCE LICORISH

Joyce Licorish is a creative visionary with a unique ability for storytelling through writing, speaking, film and music.  She is a public speaker, voice actress, and vocalist known internationally and nationally for performing Jazz, R&B, Opera and Soul, she has been opener for Chaka, Babyface, Isleys, Boyz II Men and more, she is the Winner of Cobb idol 2021 and the voice of Subway.

Showtimes: 7:30pm | 9:30pm

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Michael Steven Bublé was born September 9, 1975 in Burnaby, British Columbia to a fisherman and homemaker. Their surname was originally spelled Bubli. Dreaming of becoming a famous singer since he was two, his interest in jazz began at around age five when his family played Bing Crosby’s White Christmas album. The first time his family noticed his singing talent was during the Christmas holidays, when Bublé was 13 years old, and they heard him powerfully sing the phrase “May your days be merry and bright” when singing on a car ride.

His first singing engagements were in nightclubs at age 16 and were facilitated by his plumber grandfather who offered his plumbing services in exchange for stage time for his grandson and paid for his singing lessons. As a children’s entertainer he used the name Mickey Bubbles.

Bublé grew up listening to his grandfather’s collection of jazz records and credits his grandfather in encouraging his love for jazz music. At 18 he entered a local talent contest and won, but was disqualified for being underage. He went on to enter other contests and perform in clubs, conventions, cruise ships, hotel lounges, and shopping malls.

By 1996 Michael appeared in different roles on television in Death Game, The X-Files, Big Band Boom!, and on the CTV network. He received two Genie Award nominations for Best Original Song in 2000 for I’ve Never Been in Love Before and Dumb ol’ Heart, two songs he wrote for the film Here’s to Life!.

He recorded three independent albums First Dance, Babalu, and Dream before his self-titled debut album in 2003 featuring a range of standards from various eras and genres. He has followed with seven more through 2022 along with tours, a residency, four Grammy awards, 8 Juno awards and numerous nominations. He received the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia.

Vocalist Michael Bublé, who is often credited for helping to renew public interest and appreciation for traditional pop standards and the Great American Songbook, due to his musical influences Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin and Sam Cooke. He continues to perform and tour.

CALIFORNIA JAZZ FOUNDATION

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TATIANA EVA-MARIE & AVALON JAZZ BAND

Tatiana Eva-Marie, is a Brooklyn-based singer and bandleader. Born and raised in Europe in a professional musical family, a Swiss-French composer and a Romanian classical violinist, Tatiana Eva-Marie grew up equally fascinated by her father’s New Orleans jazz records, and her mother’s heritage of Klezmer and Gypsy folk music.

Nicknamed “the Gypsy-jazz Warbler” by the New York Times and acclaimed as a “millennial shaking up the jazz scene” by magazine Vanity Fair, Tatiana Eva-Marie returns to explore the music of composer Django Reinhardt through her own original arrangements and lyrics in her latest project “Djangology”, a tribute inspired by her French and Romanian Gypsy heritage and her love for the Parisian art scene of the 1920s to the 1960s.

Acclaimed by such publications as the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times, and Tatiana performs regularly in New York City, and around the world, with performances at The New Orleans Jazz Festival, Jazz Aspen SnowMass, SummerStage NY, Riverboat Jazz Festival (Denmark), Bahrein Jazz Festival, Le Méridien (Paris), Tanzcafe Arlberg (Austria), Jazz aux Sources Festival (France), Le Bal Blomet (Paris), Cully Jazz Festival (Switzerland), Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing, Deva Jazz Festival (Romania) and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

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ARTISTRY & SOUL: AN EVENING WITH GREGORY PORTER

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Gregory Porter was raised in Bakersfield, California, and he cites the Bakersfield Southern gospel sound, as well as his mother’s Nat King Cole record collection, as fundamental influences on his own sound. In 2013, he released his breakout Blue Note debut Liquid Spirit, which sold more than a million albums and earned Porter his first Grammy Award, with NPR declaring him “America’s Next Great Jazz Singer.” His 2016 follow-up, Take Me to the Alley, won Porter his second Grammy for Best Vocal Jazz Album and established him as his generation’s most soulful jazz singer-songwriter. His 2021 release Still Rising collected new songs, covers, duets and a selection of his favorite songs. Concertgoers can expect to hear a selection of material from across Porter’s Grammy-nominated and Grammy-winning albums.

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VANESSA RUBIN QUARTET

New York City vocalist extraordinaire and 2020 NAACP Image Awards nominee makes a one-night-only return.

Vanessa’s journey to becoming a jazz singer could be said to have begun at an early age. She was characterized by her mother as always being “a very vocal child,” and knew Vanessa would, “do something with that big ol’ mouth of hers.” Coming from parents who valued academia, discipline and hard work, that “something” was meant to be law school. Attaining a BA from the The Ohio State School of Journalism in 1979 was not a disappointment. However, her decision to pursue a career jazz singing did come as a surprise. Vanessa’s fascination with language coupled with her passion for music, especially jazz, pointed her on a collision course toward jazz performance.

Her “a-ha” moment came during a college beauty pageant at which Vanessa was accompanied by a very young, and even then, a very capable Bobby Floyd of Columbus, Ohio. Her first performance of a jazz evergreen, the Billie Holiday original “God Bless The Child,” garnered both rousing applause and the winning talent award. Most importantly though, it awakened what Vanessa describes as “her calling.” “I fell in love with the moment, the music, the audience and the effect it had on them and me,” Rubin remembers.

Vanessa’s first gigs began around 1980 in small clubs around Cleveland such as Tucker’s Place, Bob’s Toast of the Town, Lancer’s Steak House, Club Isabella, The Native Son and The Teal Lounge. Some early band mates included Wynn Bibbs, Skip Gibson, saxophonist and arranger Willie Smith, Neal Creque, Matthew “Chink” Stevenson and, later, the uniquely soulful organ quartet of The Blackshaw Brothers with Cecil Rucker on vibes. “We worked 8 days a week all over Cleveland catching the tail end of what was left over from the good old days,” Rubin recalls. After two years, Rubin was anxious to set her sights on New York where she earnestly and humbly soaked up the tutelage of many veterans like Pharaoh Sanders, Frank Foster and Barry Harris.

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