Rachael Price (USA) 8.00pm tonight at The Ellington Jazz club

Twenty-three year old jazz vocalist Rachael Price has amassed an impressive resume for her age. With the release this month of her new recording "The Good Hours", Price muses on the whirlwind ride of the last five years. "It´s been amazing – touring the U.S. with my trio, singing with the T.S. Monk Sextet, international jazz festivals in Brazil and Panama, recording three CD´s – all while completing a degree in Jazz Studies at the New England Conservatory."

Born in Australia and raised in Nashville, Price admits she "has been singing jazz since a small child." She recalls "jazz hit an inner chord with me at the age of five. I heard Ella Fitzgerald´s rendition of The Lady is a Tramp. I didn´t understand the lyrics, but I liked the feeling it gave me." Her father had an extensive jazz collection, and the young child started singing along with Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O´Day, Peggy Lee, Doris Day and others. "By the time she was nine," her dad recalls, "she sounded just like the classic vocalists of the 40´s…she would spend hours singing while pretending she was in some old black and white musical."

At seventeen, still in high school, she recorded "Dedicated To You", a collection of standards as a tribute to Ella, Doris, Nat King Cole and others. When the singer and actress Kathryn Grayson, of MGM musicals fame, first heard the recording in 2003 she exclaimed it was "the best young voice I´ve heard, period. No one around can even touch her voice and style– a style all her own."
After winning many local talent competitions in Tennessee, she was selected as a vocalist by the Grammy Foundation for their National High School Jazz Choir, and went on to become the youngest semi-finalist in both the Montreaux International Jazz Vocal Competition in Europe and the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. While performing in Switzerland she was heard by six-time Grammy nominee Nnenna Freelon. Nnenna, and her manager, Ed Keane, were so impressed with the seventeen-year-old that he signed her up, and the touring has been constant ever since.
In her first appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival she received a standing ovation, and the Boston Globe announced "young vocalist Rachael Price created a small buzz with her work sitting in with the T.S. Monk Sextet." In 2006 the Los Angeles Times reported that "she is clearly a talent with extraordinary potential." Similar rave reviews appeared in newspapers throughout the country as she began touring with her own trio.

“The best young voice I've heard, period. No one around can even touch her voice and style -- a style all her own." - Kathryn Grayson, actress & singer of MGM fame

“I think she´s brilliant, I love her.… There´s so much that´s good: the body, the depth, the warmth, and the enunciation!" - Nancy Wilson

"She’s got an amazing voice. Her pitch is right on . . . She’s so young, she’s got a great future ahead of her.” - Al Schmitt, Grammy-Award winning engineer and producer

Joined by Graham Wood (piano), Nick Abbey (bass) and Ben Falle (drums).

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