Veronica Swift returns to thrill jazz fans

THE TERM “PRODIGY” seems to be used loosely these days, but when it comes to jazz singer Veronica Swift, she’s the real deal. She put out her first album at the age of 9, went on tour with her musician parents, and at 11 appeared at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Lincoln Center. Swift returns to the Center’s Jazz Series June 24 for what will be an awe-inspiring performance.

“She not only possesses one of the strongest, clearest voices in jazz today, but she deploys it with style, wit, and expert phrasing and nuance,” says kuvo.org radio in Denver. “A comparison to Cécile McLorin Salvant seems pretty obvious.” (McLorin Salvant will be part of the Center’s 2023–24 Jazz Club series.) Londonjazznews calls her “a welcome reminder of Anita O’Day in her prime.”

Swift does mix things up. In a recent concert she segued into a hair-band rock song that was certainly outside the jazz genre, but then began to scat the music. That’s not what one would expect with an electric guitar in the background, but Swift confesses she was in a metal band when she was in college, and she makes it work. Her shows run the gamut of jazz, Broadway, the Sherman Brothers (of Disney-songs fame) and crooners from the ’60s and ’70s. She can sing a song like “How Lovely to be A woman” (From Bye Bye Birdie) and give it a dose of incredulousness that makes it clear this is not what most women today would lean towards.

She has performed with many leading jazz superstars including Grammy-winning trumpeters Wynton Marsalis and Chris Botti and pianists Benny Green and Michael Feinstein. Botti was blown away when he initially encountered Swift in a jazz club in New York City. “In two seconds you knew there’s something different about her. I literally think that in 10 years she’s going to be the biggest sophisticated jazz singer in the world. That’s how much I believe in her.” At the rate Swift is going, it will be a lot less than 10 years.

Opening the concert will be Kings Return, a Dallas-based a cappella group that proudly announces, “We sing in stairwells.” The quartet found fame when they started posting videos of their stairwell rehearsals in a local church and quickly got millions of views. They blend sounds that include gospel, jazz, R&B, soul, and classical music and have a reputation for performing diverse arrangements from “Ave Maria” to “How Deep is Your Love,” as well as cover songs by the Bee Gees, Stevie Wonder, and Simon and Garfunkel.

This will be an evening of beautiful voices you won’t want to miss.

RENÉE

June 24 | Tickets start at $29