All ages will enjoy this fabulous double-bill of two of the best young jazz singers around: Aubrey Johnson, winner of multiple Downbeat Jazz magazine awards for jazz vocals at the collegiate level, and Claire Dickson (age 13), Downbeat winner at the Junior High level. The night will include songs from the American Songbook, Bebop classics and new originals. Expect incredible scat singing, superb musicianship and youthful exuberance. Bring your mother, bring the kids!
Winner of the 2010 Downbeat Student Jazz Award for Junior High jazz vocals, Claire Dickson comes from the School of Ella, but at the age of 13 has already developed her own original scat style, her own interpretations of the classics, and her own stage presence which at once shows incredible maturity and immense promise. A veteran of the Boston theater scene, she has taken to jazz singing with joyful abandon. In addition to winning the Downbeat Award, she has headlined at Ryles Jazz Club and the Lilypad, she has performed and recorded with “Made in the Shade” and performed at schools and jazz jams around Boston....
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All ages will enjoy this fabulous double-bill of two of the best young jazz singers around: Aubrey Johnson, winner of multiple Downbeat Jazz magazine awards for jazz vocals at the collegiate level, and Claire Dickson (age 13), Downbeat winner at the Junior High level. The night will include songs from the American Songbook, Bebop classics and new originals. Expect incredible scat singing, superb musicianship and youthful exuberance. Bring your mother, bring the kids!
Winner of the 2010 Downbeat Student Jazz Award for Junior High jazz vocals, Claire Dickson comes from the School of Ella, but at the age of 13 has already developed her own original scat style, her own interpretations of the classics, and her own stage presence which at once shows incredible maturity and immense promise. A veteran of the Boston theater scene, she has taken to jazz singing with joyful abandon. In addition to winning the Downbeat Award, she has headlined at Ryles Jazz Club and the Lilypad, she has performed and recorded with “Made in the Shade” and performed at schools and jazz jams around Boston.
Claire’s performances draw heavily on the American songbook, with injections of bop and blues. Watching her perform is to witness an artistic talent unfold before your eyes. She is constantly finding new approaches to melodies we all thought we knew and resurrecting neglected tunes and breathing new life into them. Her clear, flexible voice is ideally suited to the subtle inflections and phrasings of her demanding repertoire.
“Startlingly accomplished for her age” - Kevin Lowenthal, Boston Globe
Claire has been singing in public since she was 3-years-old when she had her first solo with a chorus at Club Passim where, at age 5 she was the warm-up act for the legendary Von Trapp singers. She went on to become a fixture on the Boston theater scene, performing with New Rep Theater, Revels, the Reagle Players, and the MIT Shakespeare Players, among many others.
Claire's love for music runs in the family. She's the daughter of Glenn Dickson, clarinetist/bandleader for internationally the renowned klezmer band Shirim and avant-klezmer band Naftule's Dream. In late 2008, he loaded an Ella Fitzgerald recording onto the family MP3 player and Claire became instantly enamored of Fitzgerald's voice and style. In February of 2009, she began singing jazz. She soon performed at Ryles Jazz Club, sold out shows at the Lily Pad.
Aubrey Johnson is a Boston-based singer/composer/arranger whose music combines her many stylistic influences which range from jazz, pop, and folk, to opera, Brazilian, and Turkish music, creating her unique brand of improvisation-rooted composition, with and without lyrics.
Born to a musical family in Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1985, Aubrey Johnson fell in love with music at a very young age and soon after began singing in church and taking piano lessons. Studying classical piano and teaching herself to sing all kinds of pop, rock, and Broadway repertoire throughout middle and high school made for a very fertile period of growth for the young musician, who began performing professionally at the age of 16. Also during this time, Aubrey began studying jazz piano and voice with Lawrence University professor, Christine Salerno. Her studies with Salerno and new-found love for improvised music led her to pursue a degree in Vocal Jazz Performance at Western Michigan University.
At WMU, Aubrey was selected to be a member of Gold Company, the university’s world-renowned vocal jazz ensemble. With the ensemble, directed by Dr. Steve Zegree, she performed at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall, Miller Auditorium, the 2006 IAJE conference and with Bobby McFerrin, Janis Siegel, Darmon Meader, Roger Treece, and Fred Hersch.
In 2005 and again in 2006, Aubrey recorded and performed the original compositions of pianist Ron DiSalvio, featuring drummer Jimmy Cobb. Her work with Cobb/DiSalvio can be heard on their recent Origin Records release Essence of Green. In March of 2007, she performed with Fred Hersch at the "Annual Fred Hersch Honors Duo Concert” at Western Michigan University. It was also in that year that Aubrey won her first of two DownBeat Collegiate Student Music Awards, for “Jazz Vocalist Outstanding Performance.”
Aubrey’s talents also have been recognized by composer/singer/arranger Roger Treece, who in 2008 called upon her clear, soprano voice to be a part of a vocal ensemble on Bobby McFerrin’s choral album, which is nearly complete. During the same year, Aubrey was awarded her second DownBeat Award for “Best Jazz Vocalist.”
Upon completion of her degree at Western Michigan, Aubrey yearned for further study and time to nurture her passion for instrumental music as well as modern improvisational and composition techniques. At the suggestion of Fred Hersch, she moved to Boston to pursue her Masters Degree at the New England Conservatory, on scholarship. Here she studied with some of the world’s top jazz performers, including Danilo Perez, Jerry Bergonzi, Dominique Eade, and Jerry Leake. At NEC, her penchant for singing without words soared, as she began performing her original compositions and those of her peers in this style. The concept of using the voice as an instrument has been something that has long intrigued Aubrey, who began doing so as child, singing along with the classical piano music she studied. In May of 2009, Aubrey graduated with honors and was awarded the “Gunther Schuller Medal” for outstanding performance and for making an extraordinary contribution to the life of the school.
During the summer of 2009, she performed at the Zeltsman Marimba Festival with Lyle Mays and Steve Rodby, playing keyboards and singing wordless melodies. The large ensemble, which included marimbas, percussion, and voice, world-premiered Mays’ most recent composition, “Eberhard.” Aubrey appeared again with Mays, Paul McCandless, Steve Rodby, and Mark Walker at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival in May of 2010. Most recently, Aubrey was honored for a third time by DownBeat Magazine in their Collegiate Student Music Awards for outstanding performance in jazz voice. Aubrey is currently composing music for a new album to be released in 2011 under Greg Osby’s independent record label, Inner Circle Music.
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