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Wesla Whitfield

Artist Bio

Wesla Whitfield inhabits that indeterminate zone where jazz and cabaret meet. Trained in classical music and opera, Whitfield has toiled for more than three decades to become one of the most gifted performers breathing life into that exquisite body of Broadway tunes, movie songs and Hit Parade numbers known collectively as the Great American Songbook. Though based in San Francisco, Whitfield now spends much of her time in New York, working such noted rooms as the Algonquin Oak Room, Jazz Standard, Le Jazz Au Bar and frequent concerts at Town Hall, Avery Fisher and Carnegie Hall.
With her deft sense of time and uncanny ability to connect with the emotional truth in a lyric, the jazz world has had no qualms about embracing her as one of its own. Accompanied by jazz greats Mike Greensill and John Wiitala, Whitfield’s sixteenth recording, ‘In My Life’ on HighNote records, released in January of 2005 is being hailed as her finest to date. She has garnered numerous national television, radio and written
media credits including, All Things Considered, People Magazine, CBS Sunday Morning, New York Times Sunday Magazine and the October '05 issue of ‘O’ Magazine.

Reviews and Quotes

"This wonderful singer thrills me when I hear her." Tony Bennett

"Ms. Whitfield combines ruthless insight, intense emotion and highly evolved jazz phrasing into a musical evening that goes beyond mere entertainment to flirt with profundity."
New York Times

"Wesla Whitfield has brought back a lost art by making old songs sound new every time she sings them. Perched on stools in rooms still dark but no longer smoky, Whitfield performs songs as conversations with her husband, arranger-pianist Mike Greensill; with the other musicians; with the composers and lyricists; with the emotion as a leaf in the wind, and sweet as sap. Whitfield sings it like it is; she has known despair
and hope, and she's come out a cockeyed optimist. As she sings "When You Wish Upon A Star," you
believe your dreams will come true because she does, and hers did."
Boston Globe

"For Whitfield, it's always the words, delivered as if she's just chosen them herself.
Is she the best singer -- jazz or whatever-around today? No disagreement here."
Village Voice

"Wesla Whitfield's back in town: the best cabaret singer in the world. She knows how to point up every lewd nuance in a Cole Porter lyric. But she can also swing as hard as Nat Cole, and her way with a torch song is as devastatingly unsentimental as Frank Sinatra at his late-50s best."
New York Daily News

"A lovely instrument, a sure technique, a novel way with phrase, a deep understanding of lyrics - these elements rarely come together in the work of a single vocalist. Where other singers choose histrionics, Whitfield consistently opts for understatement. Where lesses vocalist emphasize one register of their instrument over another, Whitfield produces lean, even, utterly controlled vocal lines top to bottom."
Chicago Tribune

"Wesla Whitfield is an indoor landmark. Every great city deserves a signature chanteuse, and
San Francisco is fortunate to have Whitfield as its resident voice. Much like the city itself,
Whitfield keeps an amused and affectionate eye on the glories of the past, while living entirely
in the present."
San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the finest masters of popular singing, Whitfield should be scrutinized by anyone attempting to learn the subtleties of the vocal arts, and treasured by listeners who value beautiful music, beautifully done. Her voice is pure yet as malleable as a jazz horn, and she uses it with meticulous attention to detail. The result is superb jazz singing. Whitfield is, in short, a singer so good that she doesn't have to shout, she doesn't have to overdramatize, and she doesn't have to be anything other than what she is
-- a nonpareil musical artist."
The Los Angeles Times

"Wesla Whitfield renders song classics with such imagination that her interpretations can't be confused with anyone else's. Her technique is distinctive, too: she spins out the longest phrases in the business, sometimes saving intense surges for the very end, where others would be completely out of breath. Even modest shadings of color or mood pack a wallop."
The New Yorker

"My idea of the best of all possible musical experiences might well be Wesla Whitfield...her use of dynamics, often with a dramatic, personal flair...convert virtually every one of her renditions into a distinctive, personalized classic."
San Franscisco Examiner

Whitfield is a singer who's got it all: clarion pitch, delicious tone, textbook enunciation,
priceless timing, quick wit, and a lot more."
Jazziz Magazine

Specialties

Popular Vocalist

Genre

jazz vocal american popular standards

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