Agneta Baumann

b. 1944, Kalmar, Sweden. As a child Baumann sang at school in both the choir and jazz band. After leaving school, she sang in hotels and restaurants, developing a reputation as a popular entertainer. Although her early musical interests were mainly centred on pop, she began playing close attention to singers from the jazz world, notably Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae, Anita O’Day and Sarah Vaughan. For a while, Baumann was obliged to work outside music but from the mid-60s gained some success with the Golden Girls, a Copenhagen-based Motown Records -style group. In 1968, she went out as a solo singer and band leader in her own right and by the end of the decade was in demand in Sweden and other countries in Scandinavia and northern Europe. A spell in the late 70s with pianist Knud Jørgensen and bass player Bengt Hanson strengthened her jazz singing credentials. Following the death of her husband in 1986, Baumann stepped out of the spotlight for some years but returned to the stage in 1995. Now committed to jazz, she quickly established a following in Stockholm and was soon becoming very popular in the same areas she had conquered 30 years earlier as a contemporary pop singer. She made her jazz recording debut in 1996, and the following year received a scholarship from Laila and Charles Gavatin’s Foundation for Jazz Music. In the late 90s and early 00s, Baumann made appearances at jazz festivals in Copenhagen, Helsinki, Krakow, Moscow and Warsaw, while continuing to strengthen her Stockholm base. Among other instrumentalists with whom she has worked are bass players Hans Backenroth and Palle Danielsson, pianists Gösta Rundqvist and Lasse Bagge, trumpeter Bosse Broberg, tenor saxophonist Anders Lindskog, and drummer Johan Löfcrantz. Baumann’s liquid vocal sound and elegant and sometimes stately delivery are particularly well suited to ballads and her interpretation of lyrics is both fluid and deep.
© TiVo