Cassandra Wilson

Full of elegance and velvety soul, Cassandra Wilson is a Grammy-winning jazz vocalist who was once dubbed "America's Best Singer" by 'Time' magazine and was regarded as a natural successor to greats like Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday.

Born in Jackson, Mississippi, she started learning the piano at the age of six and, after picking up the guitar from her music teacher father, began writing her own songs at twelve. From playing Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell covers in coffee houses and high school groups and fronting R&B and funk acts at university, Wilson made her way to New York in the early 1980s, becoming part of the M-Base collective of musicians, poets and dancers who created an experimental style of jazz-funk grooves. The scene allowed her to hone her improvised scat skills, make her first recordings with saxophonist Steve Coleman and tour with trio New Air, before she launched her debut solo album 'Point of View' in 1986.

Her loose, funky sound was very much of the time, but it was when she released the more traditional album of standards 'Blue Skies' in 1988 that jazz purists started to take notice and she landed a deal with legendary label Blue Note. The vintage, sparse style of 'Blue Light 'Til Dawn' drew great praise from critics in 1993 and 'New Moon Daughter' won her the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance in 1996.

She went on to tour with Wynton Marsalis's musical stage show 'Blood On the Fields', which told the story of two American slaves and became the first jazz production to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. She paid tribute to Miles Davis on the album 'Travelling Miles' in 1999, and her willingness to merge rock, blues, soul, country and jazz music together continued on later works such as the Grammy-winning 'Loverly' and 'Silver Pony' which topped the NPR Jazz Critics Poll in 2010. She has also recorded with Elvis Costello, Courtney Pine, The Roots and Luther Vandross over the years, and in 2015 celebrated the 100-year anniversary of Billie Holiday's birth with the album 'Coming Forth By Day'.