NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan at Monkfish with Yoko Miwa Trio 12/15
NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan returns to The Mad Monkfish, 524 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge for two performances on Friday, December 15. Joined by the Yoko Miwa Trio featuring pianist Miwa, bassist Brad Barrett, and drummer Scott Goulding, Jordan will perform sets at 7 and 9 p.m. Tickets are $25 plus meal purchase. For information call 617-441-2116 or visit this link.
Jordan will also present a vocal master class on Saturday, December 16 from 1-4 p.m. Tickets to participate in the master class are $40, availablehere. Tickets to audit the master class are $15, available here.
One of the most distinctive and creative of all jazz singers, NEA Jazz Master and self-described “Jazz Child” Sheila Jordan is one of those rare vocalists whose voice can be regarded among the great instruments of the music. Born November 18,1928 and raised in poverty in Pennsylvania’s coal-mining country, Jordan began singing as a child and by the time she was in her early teens was working semi-professionally in Detroit clubs. Most of her influences have been instrumentalists rather than singers, the greatest being Charlie Parker. After moving to New York in the early 50s, she married Parker’s pianist, Duke Jordan, and studied with Lennie Tristano. She didn’t begin recording until the early 60s, then faded from view for two decades as she stepped back from her career to raise her daughter. Since her return to recording in the late 1970s she has remained one of the most acclaimed and beloved vocalists in jazz, pioneering a duo approach with solo bass and enjoying longstanding collaborations with the likes of Cameron Brown, Harvie S and Steve Kuhn and recording with the likes of Carla Bley, Roswell Rudd, Mark Murphy, Arild Andersen and George Russell.
Jordan, who turns 95 in November, continues to make creative, important music and inspire new generations of jazz artists. In 2012 she received the nation’s highest honor in jazz – a Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2021, Capri Records released Comes Love, an album of recently discovered recordings Jordan made in 1960
