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Update 6/20/04 Liz will be performing in the Montreux Jazz Fest vocal competiton this July! Wish her luck! Check it out at www.montreuxjazz.com ******************************************** Blame it on Basie. Or maybe the Wilson Middle School Jazz Band. One encounter with a swinging big band, and Liz Johnson's fate was sealed. "I remember one day in sixth grade walking into the gym where the band was rehearsing," Johnson reminisces about the moment she fell in love with jazz. "I couldn't get enough. I knew right then it was what I wanted to do." Born in Rockford, Ill., Liz Johnson had already been a musician since the age of six. A flute player, she found the transition to saxophone a "natural progression" and studied the instrument through high school and then college, playing in local jazz bands. Johnson's sophisticated alto sax has been said to "reflect both the cool, serene influence of Paul Desmond and the more emphatic attack of Art Pepper." (The Nashville Scene, March 2002). But while sax was her first jazz instrument, Johnson discovered her true passion in her voice -- giving her music the added influence of great jazz instrumentalists and vocal stylists alike. Fate gave her a chance to move to the South's country music mecca for reasons entirely unrelated to music. But Johnson had a hunch that a place named Music City U.S.A. must have a jazz scene. And she was right. After playing around town with local budding musicians, she started vocal study at the Nashville Jazz Workshop with some of the Southeast's heaviest jazz professionals. Johnson has studied and performed with pianist/vocalist/recording artist Beegie Adair, pianist Lori Mechem, bassist Roger Spencer, saxophonists Denis Solee and Jeff Coffin, trumpeter Rod McGaha and bassist/vocalist/recording artist Jim Ferguson to name a few. And in the process has built an impressive repertoire that ranges from classic blues to traditional jazz standards. Those who have heard Johnson, either in person or on CD, immediately sense her firm grasp of the jazz idiom, whether she's singing or playing alto. "They're both instruments to me," she says. "I'm trying to vocalize with my horn and right now I'm learning to play with my voice." Her earliest vocal influence came from greats such as Billie Holliday and Sarah Vaughn. Today, Liz immerses herself in the sounds of jazz greats like Shirley Horn, Nancy Wilson, Cannonball Adderley, Art Farmer and Paul Desmond while not on stage performing her own arrangements of classic jazz tunes. She continues to develop her own style through her lyric writing, setting her own words to some of the more obscure instrumentals of jazz history. Liz performs regularly in the Nashville area with her own quartet and with the Establishment big band as a vocalist, and supports a growing road schedule that took her to the Watertown Jazz Festival, Chicago and New York City in 2002. Nashville's city paper said her first full-album release, "One More for The Road," (Lily Records, 2001) "indicates she's quickly becoming another Nashville jazz musician deserving of some national attention." (July 2001). Audiences second that opinion. "I have an idealistic vision of what I'm doing," says Johnson who sees herself and her talent as a work in progress. "The music is a vehicle for me to evolve and give something back. We're all supported by a huge network of friends and family, a community. I want to be able to give back to that community --- all those friends and family and teachers who made a difference to me." The future, she'll tell you, will take care of itself. But whatever happens, it will happen musically. "I want to keep playing music until I'm 95 1/2." she says. "And when I come back again I still want to be a musician." Check out the artist's website: http://www.lilyrecords.com Track List: 1. My Shining Hour 2. You Let Me Down 3. Bewitched 4. One For My Baby 5. Night Dreamer 6. I Love Paris 7. Dancing on the Ceiling 8. Moanin' 9. Paper Moon 10. Black Coffee 11. All My Tomorrows Suggested CDs:Other Genres:
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