Catherine Russell at Shalin Liu Performance Center

Critically-acclaimed, one-of-a-kind jazz and blues vocalist Catherine Russell‘s stalwart, soulful voice radiates interpretive power yet remains touchingly vulnerable. Influenced by her talented parents – father Luis Russell was Louis Armstrong’s musical director and mother Carline Ray a veteran jazz bassist and singer – Cat’s exposure to a variety of genres shaped her early eclectic style. A Grammy Award winner, she sang backup for such celebrated artists as Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash, Paul Simon, David Bowie, and Madonna, and has taken the jazz world by storm since her solo debut in 2006. A hit at festivals world-wide, she has joined the ranks of the one of the greatest interpreters of American Popular Song....

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Critically-acclaimed, one-of-a-kind jazz and blues vocalist Catherine Russell‘s stalwart, soulful voice radiates interpretive power yet remains touchingly vulnerable. Influenced by her talented parents – father Luis Russell was Louis Armstrong’s musical director and mother Carline Ray a veteran jazz bassist and singer – Cat’s exposure to a variety of genres shaped her early eclectic style. A Grammy Award winner, she sang backup for such celebrated artists as Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash, Paul Simon, David Bowie, and Madonna, and has taken the jazz world by storm since her solo debut in 2006. A hit at festivals world-wide, she has joined the ranks of the one of the greatest interpreters of American Popular Song.



“A voice that wails like a horn and whispers like a snake in the Garden of Eden”
- NPR

“could melt the ice in bourbon on the rocks”
- The Boston Globe

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