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Alyssa Allgood

Alyssa Allgood is an award-winning jazz vocalist, composer, arranger and educator with a compelling voice in the modern jazz landscape. Described as “assured and daring” by Downbeat Magazine and “a model of sophisticated song interpretation” by the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago-based artist boldly weaves soulful storytelling and rich improvisational language through original compositions, captivating arrangements and a lyrical focus of self-love and human connection.

Allgood’s exhilarating fourth album, “From Here”, is due April 19, 2024 on Next Records. Recorded with internationally renowned musicians John Patitucci, Kendrick Scott, Geoffrey Keezer and Greg Ward, the music showcases a modern approach to jazz singing with musical interaction and vocal freedom at its core. The album features 10 original songs which show Allgood reaching a new pinnacle of personal expression, emotional observation and artistic achievement. Her three previous albums — What Tomorrow Brings (Cellar Music, 2021), Exactly Like You (Cellar Music, 2018), and her self-released debut Out of the Blue (2016) — trace the remarkable trajectory of a vocalist admired for the clarity of her instrument, the sureness of her phrasing, the range of her improvising, and the burgeoning depth of her interpretative skills.

Allgood first made her name in such legendary Chicago clubs as the Green Mill and the Jazz Showcase, through residences at Winter’s Jazz Club — where she has delved into the songbooks of jazz’s classic divas (Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Dinah Washington) — and at the internationally renowned Chicago Jazz Festival. Appearances followed in New York’s famed Birdland, Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai (China) and the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts (British Columbia). She was a semifinalist in the 2015 Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition, where jazz icon Al Jarreau led the jury, before winning the Inaugural Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Voice Competition (2017) and the David Baker Memorial Scholarship offered through the Jazz Education Network (2022). Closer to home, she was a 2016 Jazz Improvisation Fellow of the Luminarts Cultural Foundation in Chicago and was named Best Jazz Entertainer in the Chicago Music Awards (2019).

A passionate educator, Allgood teaches in the Jazz Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She empowers her students to learn with intention and curiosity while building community and inspiring mindfulness through the jazz artform. Allgood is a highly sought-after clinician and has presented masterclasses at many esteemed institutions including the Jazz Education Network Conference, the Illinois Music Educators Association, the Iowa Choral Directors Association, Anchor Music’s Vocal Jazz Academy, Jazzvoice.com, the University of Chicago and Drake University.

Awards

2023 - International Songwriting Competiton Finalist

2023 - John Lennon Songwriting Contest Finalist

2022 - David Baker Memorial Scholarship Jazz Education Network

2022 - International Songwriting Competition Semifinalist

2020- Project grants from Illinois Arts Council and Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs

2019 -Chicago Music Awards Best Jazz Entertainer

2017 - Inagural Ella Fitzgerald Competition Winner

2016 - Luminarts Cultural Foundation Jazz Improvisation Fellow

2015 - Montreux Jazz Voice Competition Semifinalist


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2
Album Review

Kenny Reichert: Deep Breath

Read "Deep Breath" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci


Kenny Reichert is a jny:Chicago-based guitarist of broad background, Berklee training, and wide-ranging tastes in pop and jazz. He has self-released one studio album, Interpretations (2015). Reichert records mostly originals. If you are looking for influences, “Spears" (a play on “Sphere"?) sounds Thelonious Sphere Monk-ish enough, with plenty of solo space for saxophonist Tony Barba woven in. Barba can hold his own with anyone. Reichert does not shy away from vocals either. His lyricist and singer is Alyssa ...

4
Album Review

Paul Marinaro: Not Quite Yet

Read "Not Quite Yet" reviewed by Pierre Giroux


Singer Paul Marinaro issued his acclaimed debut album Without A Song (122 Myrtle Records) in 2013. Seven years after the release of his follow-up, “One Night In Chicago" (122 Myrtle Records), and with almost a decade of performing from coast to coast at top-end clubs, including New York's Birdland, he has released Not Quite Yet, which is devoted to exploring timeless themes, such as life, love and the search for lasting connections. Accompanying Marinaro are longtime band members guitarist Mike ...

7
Album Review

Paul Marinaro: Not Quite Yet

Read "Not Quite Yet" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci


The cover of the album is vaguely noir, with the urban greenish cast of tungsten film. A sole figure leans slightly against a building, downcast, staring into his soul, and waiting out a lit cigarette when it was still hip to smoke. The guy is Frank Sinatra and the album was In The Wee Small Hours. The year is 1955. It is difficult to believe that jny: Chicago-based vocalist Paul Marinaro has even been born, but clearly, Sinatra will make ...

10
Album Review

Alyssa Allgood: What Tomorrow Brings

Read "What Tomorrow Brings" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


In the chemistry lab, solvents are said to be punctilious when they have been completely purified through filtering, distillation, and chromatography. Punctilious ether, if a sound, could be compared to the perfectly polished tone generated from lead crystal when struck with a platinum spoon. This is the level of refinement heard in Alyssa Allgood's voice on What Tomorrow Brings. Allgood has been filtering and distilling her tone over three previous recordings: Lady BIrd (Self Produced, 2015); Out Of The Blue ...

12
Year in Review

C. Michael Bailey’s Best Releases of 2016

Read "C. Michael Bailey’s Best Releases of 2016" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Shifting priorities in 2016 prevented me from either listening to or reviewing as much music as I have in the past. Thus, I did not take a swing at many fine recordings that by all accounts should be on this list like: John Scofield's Country for Old Men (Impulse!); Keith Jarrett's A Multitude of Angels (ECM); Frank Kimbrough's Solstice (Pirouet Records); Joe Lovano's Classic! Live at Newport (Blue Note Records); or Michael Formanek's Ensemble Kolossus' The Distance (ECM).

2
Album Review

Alyssa Allgood: Out Of The Blue

Read "Out Of The Blue" reviewed by Tyran Grillo


If Alyssa Allgood's debut EP Lady Bird made a splash, then Out of the Blue is a veritable deluge of inspired thinking. The Chicago vocalist's imprint is evident in every lick of this full-length follow-up. From the original lyrics and arrangements to her choice of musicians and production, Allgood uses everything in her toolkit throughout 10 redux tunes from the Blue Note catalog. Many of these tracks started out as instrumentals in their heyday, foregrounding the melodic and improvisational stylings ...

13
Album Review

Alyssa Allgood: Out Of The Blue

Read "Out Of The Blue" reviewed by Mark Sullivan


Chicago vocalist Alyssa Allgood devotes her first full length album to an unexpected source: the classic hard bop repertoire of Blue Note Records. The label is mainly known for instrumental jazz, and all of these selections were originally instrumental. This presents no problem for Allgood, who demonstrates equal facility scatting, singing wordless vocalise, and writing lyrics (which she does on four tracks). She has a crack band, too: organist Dan Chase, guitarist Tim Fitzgerald, saxophonist Chris Madsen and drummer Matt ...

Read more articles

“…assured and daring.”

-Downbeat magazine

“…a model of sophisticated song interpretation.”

-Chicago tribune

“…an artist of the first order.”

-The Wholenote

“…Allgood assuming her proper position as one of the finest jazz vocalists today.”

-all about jazz

“…she is undeniably skillful at what she does.”

-the new york city jazz record

Photos

Concerts

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Deep Breath

Shifting Paradigm Records
2023

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Not Quite Yet

122 Myrtle Records
2022

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What Tomorrow Brings

Cellar Records
2021

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Out Of The Blue

Jerujazz Records
2016

buy

Lady Bird

Self Produced
2015

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Videos

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