Marcus Shelby Quintet featuring Kim Nalley & Healdsburg Freedom Jazz Choir at Raven Performing Arts Theater

A concert at the Raven Performing Arts Theater on March 1, 2019, celebrating the pioneers of jazz who came to artistic maturity in the 1920s and their shared roots in the blues: Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington. Choir directors are Marcus Shelby and Tiffany Austin.

Kim Nalley is an American jazz and blues singer known for her powerful, 3 octave range and scatting. Awarded "Most Influential African American in the Bay Area" in 2005 and "Best Jazz Group" in 2013, she is already being called "legendary" and "a San Francisco institution." With an international reputation as one of world's best jazz & blues vocalists, she has graced concert halls from Moscow to Lincoln Center. A true Renaissance woman, Kim Nalley has also been a featured writer for JazzWest and SF Chronicle's City Brights, shortlisted for a Grammy nomination, a produced playwright, a former jazz club owner, an accomplished stage actress, a Ph.D. candidate in history at UC Berkeley, and an avid Lindy Hop & blues dancer. She was shortlisted by Downbeat Critics Poll in 2017 as a "Rising Star" (Deserving Wider Recognition)....

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A concert at the Raven Performing Arts Theater on March 1, 2019, celebrating the pioneers of jazz who came to artistic maturity in the 1920s and their shared roots in the blues: Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington. Choir directors are Marcus Shelby and Tiffany Austin.

Kim Nalley is an American jazz and blues singer known for her powerful, 3 octave range and scatting. Awarded "Most Influential African American in the Bay Area" in 2005 and "Best Jazz Group" in 2013, she is already being called "legendary" and "a San Francisco institution." With an international reputation as one of world's best jazz & blues vocalists, she has graced concert halls from Moscow to Lincoln Center. A true Renaissance woman, Kim Nalley has also been a featured writer for JazzWest and SF Chronicle's City Brights, shortlisted for a Grammy nomination, a produced playwright, a former jazz club owner, an accomplished stage actress, a Ph.D. candidate in history at UC Berkeley, and an avid Lindy Hop & blues dancer. She was shortlisted by Downbeat Critics Poll in 2017 as a "Rising Star" (Deserving Wider Recognition).

Background: In 2013, with help from a grant from the James Irvine Foundation, Marcus Shelby and Healdsburg Jazz christened the Freedom Jazz Choir, putting out the call for the community to join together in thematic song suites for Black History Month.

Since then almost 100 people every year but one have joined the Freedom Jazz Choir, to perform Shelbys arrangements with the guidance of Tiffany Austin as co-director. These programs have proven popular with the community at their annual concerts, as well as the many local voices who raise their voice in song by joining the Freedom Jazz Choir.

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