The Texins Jazz Band has a 39-year history of producing concerts featuring great guest artists. The band is bringing back a guest they introduced to the DFW area in 2018 – vocal sensation Veronica Swift. Veronica stormed onto the jazz scene with a musical maturity well beyond her years. She’s been compared to everyone from Anita O’Day to Ella Fitzgerald, but she has already established her own voice. Veronica was runner up in the 2015 Thelonious Monk vocal competition. Four years later, ... view more »
The Texins Jazz Band has a 39-year history of producing concerts featuring great guest artists. The band is bringing back a guest they introduced to the DFW area in 2018 – vocal sensation Veronica Swift. Veronica stormed onto the jazz scene with a musical maturity well beyond her years. She’s been compared to everyone from Anita O’Day to Ella Fitzgerald, but she has already established her own voice. Veronica was runner up in the 2015 Thelonious Monk vocal competition. Four years later, Mack Avenue Records released her acclaimed album Confessions when she was only 25 years old.
Veronica’s latest album “Veronica Swift”, her third for Mack Avenue Records, is a masterful story. On her previous albums, Confessions (2019) and This Bitter Earth (2021), she ascended to the upper echelon of early 21st century jazz singers because of her virtuosic brilliance, interpretive ingenuity, bracing songwriting, and keen arrangements. Simply put, Swift is not only one of the most dazzling singers to emerge in her generation, she’s one of the most versatile. While her first two albums solidified her position in modern jazz, Veronica Swift shows that she’s more than a jazz singer, exploring French and Italian opera, European classical music, bossa nova, blues, industrial rock, funk, and vaudeville. She pulls the feat off without the results sounding callow or pastiche. Swift’s expansive artistic voice remains firmly intact regardless of genre.
Swift describes this personal artistic statement on her new album as “transgenre.” “I grew up immersed in the culture of jazz music, blessed to have had some of the greats as mentors, and I felt a deep familial duty to uphold that” she says, reflecting on her parents – jazz singer and educator, Stephanie Nakasian, and bebop pianist, Hod O’Brien.
She will display her versatility at this concert that features two full big bands. Planned selections include music of Stevie Wonder, Dinah Washington, The Beatles, Beach Boys, Dresden Dolls, Atlanta Rhythm Section, and music from Broadway musicals La Cage aux Folles and My Fair Lady.
“She has a miraculous voice, musical ability and technique, as well as an innate gift for entertaining a crowd.” — Wall Street Journal
“Veronica Swift is a woman of many voices, and she uses every one of them to refract a dizzying kaleidoscope of moods” — DownBeat
Texins Jazz Band is a full 18-piece community big band based in Dallas, TX. The band is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1986 at Texas Instruments in Dallas. The majority of band members have STEM-based degrees and careers (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). The band is under the musical direction of Bill Centera. Texins Jazz Band is funded in part by the City of Richardson through the City of Richardson Cultural Arts Commission.
The Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra (GDYO) Jazz Orchestra will open the show and perform with Veronica as well. Founded in 1972, the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing music education and performance opportunities that foster musical excellence, cultivate learning, encourage creativity, inspire self-motivation, and develop social skills. GDYO has grown from a single orchestra of 35 members to a program of over 450 talented musicians, ages 6 to 18. GDYO students come from over 150 different schools from 50 different communities. The GDYO Jazz Orchestra is under the direction of Kris Berg.
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