Judy Wexler

"To merit being called a jazz singer you have to have something to say-your own story-as it moves you then and there." .... Nat HentoffFrom Louis Armstrong to Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis to Pat Metheny, jazz artists have always sought to tell stories. And Judy Wexler, admired for her warm voice and nuanced approach to melody and lyrics, is a natural storyteller. She is also “one of the most focused, unpretentious, no-nonsense, bop-oriented jazz singers around,” according to Harvey Siders in JazzTimes, with “a big, appealing voice and a healthy sense of swing,” wrote Alex Henderson in All Music Guide. Her 2005 debut, Easy On The Heart, made radio waves and introduced her to a wide jazz audience; now comes the follow-up, Dreams & Shadows, confirming her ability to find great songs and effortlessly bring them to life. Debuting at number 2 on the national JazzWeek chart and reaching number 1 in Jazz on Amazon, Dreams & Shadows has received rave reviews and wide national airplay.Even before she started singing, Wexler’s career arc prepared her to spin a good story. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Wexler studied piano from the time she was 5, but she gravitated toward theater, acting and singing in high school productions. She majored in psychology at UC Santa Cruz, planning to become a clinical therapist, but after a few years, she switched her major to theater. Wexler explains, “Studying psychology ended up being very valuable to my theater work. Acting involves breaking down a character, knowing what she’s thinking and feeling. And of course, it’s also central to interpreting lyrics. Understanding character and motivation -- what drives a person – it’s essential to telling the song’s story.”After graduating, Wexler and three of her college pals moved to San Francisco and formed “Caught in the Act: A Theater Collective of Four Short Women,” performing comedy and songs to enthusiastic audiences in the Bay Area and throughout California. It was a transformative experience for the intrinsically bashful Wexler. “We’d meet almost every day to take on collective assignments, such as interviewing people, playing a character in public – which was very confrontational for me, because I’d been shy – those exercises helped create our characters and pieces for the show.”The group disbanded after 18 months, but Wexler continued to perform in theater productions in the Bay Area. She married her upstairs neighbor and spent a lot of time listening to jazz. "My husband and I lived in North Beach, just a couple of blocks from Keystone Korner," she says (referencing the world-renowned jazz club that closed in the 1980s), “where we frequently heard the finest jazz musicians around. It drew me in then and never let go." She wasn’t yet ready to perform jazz herself, so when the couple moved to L.A. a few years later, she continued in the theater scene, acting in plays and even guest starring on one episode of the hit comedy Frasier.But Wexler soon found herself irresistibly attracted to jazz, recapturing her love of piano studying at the Dick Grove Music School; she concentrated on jazz harmony and then jazz vocals, with the thought of accompanying herself at the piano. But after several years of private study with the respected pianist Terry Trotter, she explains, “I realized I’d started too late; I figured I’d be a hundred years old before I was as good as I wanted to be at accompanying myself on piano. So I decided to just focus on singing.” Then came more study, including workshops with such vaunted clinicians as Madeline Eastman and Kurt Elling; but it took a deathbed wish from her mother to get Wexler out on the nightclub stage.“My mother told me, ‘Kid, you want to sing. I’ll die happy if you just get out there and do it.’ And that was really her final gift to me. She died in August of 1999, and I got my first gig that October… although I had stage fright, I went out there and did it for Mom. She gave me a kick in the ass.” A few years of increased exposure on the L.A. scene earned her a reputation for the craftsmanship and emotional immediacy of her singing, while displaying her knack for compiling a spirited, cliché-free repertoire – all of which attracted producer Barbara Brighton. She in turn suggested pianist Alan Pasqua as pianist and arranger for Wexler’s first disc. Pasqua reprised his role on Dreams & Shadows (scheduled for release in March 2008 on the Jazzed Media label), sharing the playing and arranging with pianist Jeff Colella.Since then, Wexler has performed at the Tel Aviv Jazz Festival, the San Jose Jazz Festival, and the Temecula Valley International Jazz Festival, where she opened the show for the legendary Mose Allison; she has also headlined in venues as diverse as Montreal, Istanbul, Vancouver, Seattle, Miami, the Sundance Film Festival, and the 2006 IAJE (International Association for Jazz Education) conference in New York, garnering rave reviews and building audiences along the way."I love the freedom of jazz and I love being able to connect with the audience and express myself through the lyrics,” Wexler beams. “There is so much great material to explore and share. And living in southern California, I get to play with some of the finest jazz musicians in the world. It's a privilege that I never forget when I get up to sing."