Can a 15-year-old singer save jazz? A 15-year-old Canadian? (No disrespect intended; I’m just noting that jazz is an American art form.)
I would love to see it happen. As I’ve written before, jazz audiences are shrinking and aging: The median age of jazz consumers jumped from 29 in 1982 to 46 last year, according to the National Endowment for the Arts.
So I was amazed when I heard a wonderful jazz voice coming from NBC Nightly News last week, which I had on in the background while I checked my email. I looked up to see Brian Williams interviewing a youngster named Nikki Yanofsky, interspersed with clips of her singing like Ella and Billie. Can her voice, and her enthusiasm for jazz, draw others of her generation?
NBC posted the interview online (here) as well as a much longer version (here). In them, Nikki says she wants — no, she will — sing other genres (like pop and R&B) as well, but that jazz is her first love.
Yanofsky debuted in Canada at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in 2006, and she released an album there in 2007. But her first album in the U.S. will come this year, possibly in the first quarter. She has already performed at Carnegie Hall, in a Marvin Hamlisch program last February, and in another Hamlisch program at the Kennedy Center last May.
It’s a big task that I’ve given her; but listen to her voice and her interviews — you’ll see why I think she’s up to it. And she’s still just a kid.
UPDATE, early Feb: The unofficial word is that Yanofsky has been asked to sing at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
UPDATE 2, 4/20/10: I’ve heard the album, spent time with Yanofsky at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola and written about her for New York magazine, which you can read about here.