Lizz Wright
vocalist

Performance Dates
May 11/12 8:00 PM
Jazz with Lizz Wright

With her latest album, Dreaming Wide Awake, Lizz Wright embraces the ever-evolving history of jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, and the singer-songwriter tradition. Her voice and vision seamlessly marry songs once performed by Neil Young, Fats Waller, the Beatles, Madonna, and Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass to self-penned originals and her collaborations with some of today’s most gifted songwriters to create one of the most strikingly original albums of the year.  “I really like stuff like Jeff Buckley, Damien Rice, and Sarah McLachlan,” she says.  “I love songs that create moments.”

Wright was born on January 22, 1980, in Hahira, Georgia, the youngest of three siblings whose father was a minister and whose mother sang gospel at his services. “I’ve been singing in church since I was six – I was drafted into it,” she laughs. “My brother and sister and I used to sing as a trio when my dad would preach. If we weren’t at home doing homework or chores, we were in the car with our parents and on the way to church and different revivals.” By the age of 14, she had taught herself piano well enough to help out by “playing a little bit.”

Houston County High School and a year at Georgia State University broadened Wright’s musical horizons, but classical training was not what she was looking for. Relocated 200 miles south to Macon proved to be a turning point: “I would drive two hours several nights a week to Atlanta just to sit down and hear some jazz. After a bit, I was sitting in at jam sessions.” It was at a ’99 jam session at Churchill Grounds that she was invited to join the Atlanta band In the Spirit. Within a year’s time, Creative Loafing anointed In the Spirit the best jazz group in Atlanta and said of Lizz, “Ms. Wright may well be Ms. Right.  She has it all.”

Wright took the larger music world by storm in 2003 with breakout performances at Billie Holiday tributes in Chicago and Los Angeles and with her debut album Salt (Verve), where her rich gospel-trained contralto soared amidst a soulful R&B-meets-jazz setting. A sort of taxicab confession describes her inspiration for Dreaming Wide Awake: “I was in a Green and White cab in Atlanta going down Peachtree Street when I heard Sarah McLachlan’s ‘Angel.’ It was an incredible moment. I realized that was the kind of thing that I really wanted to do ... For Salt I had written all my songs on the piano. But when I heard this idea in my head, I grabbed the guitar, made up some chords, and just kept singing.”

Though justifiably proud of what has been accomplished so far, she aspires to a higher calling. “Music is my opportunity to let myself remember my spirit. I think of Billie Holiday and Abbey Lincoln – what it means to be a singer. When you address and share your humanity, you really are close to people in a universal sense.”

Updated: 8/31/06