Meredith d'Ambrosio

Meredith d'Ambrosio has successfully combined careers in the musical and visual arts. As a jazz singer, her dulcet, soft-toned tenor delivers intelligent and inspired interpretations of standards and original songs; she is also a fine pianist. Despite having released nearly 20 albums under her own name, she is an internationally acclaimed visual artist. Her award-winning watercolors, black pencil studies, and eggshell mosaics have graced exhibitions from New York to Paris, as well as the covers of magazines, books, and recordings. She made her recording debut on the trio outing Lost in His Arms in 1980 and the following year issued Another Time, a solo outing on which she sang as well as played. In 1985 she made her Sunnyside debut with It's Your Dance, that also featured guitarist Kevin Eubanks and pianist Harold Danko. The label became her home base. She recorded almost yearly and issued internationally acclaimed titles such as 1988's The Cove, 1991's Love Is Not a Game, and 2002's Love Is for the Birds. She performed across the United States and Europe on her own or with her late husband, pianist Eddie Higgins. After 2006's Wishing on the Moon, she began focusing primarily on visual art, but emerged in 2012 with the internationally celebrated By Myself, featuring only her voice and piano. Almost a decade later, in 2021, she returned to recording as a vocalist on Sometime Ago. Backed by a trio and quartet, the set included standards and originals. Meredith d'Ambrosio was born in Boston into a musical family. Her father sang with big bands while her mother played piano in nightclubs. At six, d'Ambrosio began to study piano and sing. At 15, she appeared on Boston television singing "Prelude to a Kiss" with a studio band. She credits her success with learning how to concentrate and to disperse her nervousness. Her first live paid jazz performance was at 17 with Roger Kellaway's group in a Boston jazz club. After graduating from high school, d'Ambrosio attended the Boston Museum School (1958 and 1959) on a fine arts scholarship. She worked as a musician in addition to painting. In 1959, she developed her eggshell mosaics technique in several paintings that were included in the book Making Mosaics by Beatrice Freeman-Lewis. In 1960, at age 19, she married and had a daughter, but divorced 18 months later and returned to live with her parents. She made money by doing calligraphy for wedding invitations, cards, envelopes, diplomas, citations, and illuminating scrolls. At night she sang at the Beaconsfield Hotel's Hunt Room, and a bit later at The Charter House in Newton. It was a tough existence for d'Ambrosio, who was involved in prolonged custody litigation with her ex-husband, and literally scuffling to make a living as an artist while playing piano and singing in area jazz clubs. In 1965, d'Ambrosio's friend Robin Hemingway took her to hear the John Coltrane Quartet play Boston's Jazz Workshop over several evenings. After one gig, d'Ambrosio accompanied Coltrane and Hemingway to breakfast. The saxophonist asked her to sing something and she complied. He was so moved, he asked her to come with him to Japan and sing with the quartet. D'Ambrosio, feeling she wasn't yet ready -- she didn't yet consider herself a professional musician, but a visual artist and parent to a pre-school-aged daughter -- politely refused. It took more than a decade for d'Ambrosio to begin her recording career, and even then, she didn't think she'd be able to do it. Her piano tuner and friend worked at the Longview Farm Recording Studios near Boston. He had free rein of the studio one day. He asked her -- supposedly just for fun -- to come sing while accompanying herself on the piano. She recorded 35 songs in a seven-hour period. Guitarist Norman Coles and pianist Ray Santisi also sat in on a few tunes. Fifteen cuts were chosen and put on a master "demo" tape. D'Ambrosio was invited to the WGBH-FM radio show Music America to play her tape. Singer Johnny Hartman was also in the studio being interviewed at the same time. When he heard D'Ambrosio's tape, he insisted on taking a copy to New York to play for a record producer. Wil Morton of Shiah Records bought the master and released it as Lost in His Arms in 1980, following it quickly with Another Time in 1981. Both albums warranted attention from jazz radio DJs and critics. Not long after, she received a call from Herb Wong at Palo Alto Records. He signed her for 1982's Little Jazz Bird, placing her in front of a quintet that included Phil Woods, Hank Jones, and Manny Albam, as well as a string quartet. The offering won acclaim and airplay across the globe and provided d'Ambrosio with her first opportunity to tour domestically and overseas. She signed to Sunnyside in 1984 -- her label home ever since -- and released It's Your Dance in 1985 accompanied by guitarist Kevin Eubanks. Pianist Harold Danko helmed the keys on half the album, while d'Ambrosio played on the rest. Between 1982 and 1985, she landed inside the Top Five in the Talent Deserving Wider Recognition category in the DownBeat International Critics Jazz Poll for Female Vocalist (and won the award for five consecutive years between 1987 and 1991). In 1987, while playing at a club on Cape Cod with Dave McKenna, pianist Eddie Higgins dropped in to see D'Ambrosio sing, having been impressed with her music on the radio. He asked her to sing a couple of songs with him, and they ended up playing the entire last set together. Eight weeks later they were engaged. D'Ambrosio recorded the acclaimed The Cove in October of 1987, accompanied by a cast who included Fred Hersch, Lee Konitz, and Michael Formanek. She and Higgins married on the July 28, 1988, the one-year anniversary of their first meeting, and The Cove appeared that October to uniformly positive reviews. Higgins became d'Ambrosio's pianist and arranger for her next three albums including South to a Warmer Place (1989), Love Is Not a Game (1991), and Shadowland (1993), and enjoyed crucial and commercial success in Europe as well as the States. In 1994, she was the featured guest on Marian McPartland's syndicated radio program Piano Jazz and recorded Sleep Warm: Lullabies for Small and Bigger Children solo. The following year, she issued Beware of Spring!, leading a trio that included bassist George Mraz and drummer Jeff Hirschfield. After a short tour she recorded 1997's Silent Passion in a duo with guitarist Gene Bertoncini. The following year she cut Echo of a Kiss, her final album of the 20th century. She arranged the 14-track set of originals and standards, leading a quartet that included bassist Jay Leonhart, pianist Mike Renzi, and drummer Terry Clarke. She released Out of Nowhere in 2000, resulting in a nomination for a prestigious Django award by the French Academy of Jazz for Best Female Jazz Vocalist. 2002 was a banner year for d'Ambrosio; Sunnyside re-released her back catalog and she issued the all-new studio entry, Love Is for the Birds, with a sextet. D'Ambrosio didn't record again until 2006, when she cut the all-original quintet program Wishing on the Moon. After touring, she took a long break from recording. She concentrated on her painting but did do some touring. After Higgins' death in 2009, she focused solely on her art and teaching. D'Ambrosio re-emerged in 2012 with the completely solo By Myself, a collection of 14 songs by composer Arthur Schwartz (1900-1984); it was her first album to be devoted to the work of a single composer, and at the time, she considered it to be her last. She seldom played live, preferring instead to focus on her art, which was exhibited across the United States and Europe. D'Ambrosio did continue to play and write songs privately, often with pianist Randy Halberstadt. In October 2019 she recorded them with the pianist, bassist Daryl Johns, drummer Steve Johns, and guest trumpeter/flugelhornist Don Sickler. The set was released in 2021 as Sometime Ago in commemoration of her 80th birthday.
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