Jazz Vocal Ensemble New York Voices to Perform at Schwartz Center This Month

New York Voices, a premiere jazz vocal ensemble, performs at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts with a program of jazz standards and big band hits in this Candler Concert Series debut on Friday, March 21.  

Award-winning New York Voices has featured Kim Nazarian, Darmon Meader, Lauren Kinhan  and Peter Eldridge for over 30 years—performing, recording and collaborating with jazz greats  including the Count Basie Orchestra, Paquito d'Rivera, and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band. 

This concert features selections from the quartet's latest release, Reminiscing in Tempo, taking a  deep dive into the jazz canon with standards by Cole Porter and Al Jolson, alongside gems from  the catalogues of Chick Corea, Fred Hersch and Duke Ellington. 

About the Artists 

New York Voices was born in the mid-1980s at New York's Ithaca College. Peter Eldridge, an  aspiring jazz pianist who came late to singing; Kim Nazarian, who dreamed of a life on Broadway;  and Darmon Meader, a saxophonist and self-described “choral geek,” came together in the  school's vocal jazz ensemble. Director Dave Reilly launched the group as New York Voices and  they began touring with Caprice Fox and Sara Krieger. With the departure of Fox and Krieger,  and the addition of Lauren Kinhan, they decided to continue as a foursome, recording and touring the United States and internationally.  

They also launched a jazz education initiative, inaugurating its Vocal Jazz Camp for aspiring jazz  singers in 2008, with a European version of the Camp in 2017. Each of its members has also  established a career as an educator: Eldridge is a voice professor at Berklee College of Music;  Nazarian a vocal jazz instructor at Ithaca College and artist-in-residence at both Bowling Green  State University and Tri-C Community College in Cleveland; Kinhan is an adjunct faculty member  at the New School; and Meader is an artist-in-residence at Indiana University.  

The geographical distance that these jobs require, along with each member's active solo  pursuits, is partly responsible for the long gap between New York Voices albums. Their 2019  release, Reminiscing in Tempo, brought the group to their latest stretch of work together. “The  things that I'm really proud of are our longevity, which just surprises and shocks all of us; the fact  that our music has grown and gotten better; and the fact that we all still want to make music  together,” says Nazarian. Recently, on the group's social media, the artists announced a  decision, made “with deep gratitude,” that they would be “hanging up their mics and retiring the  band in the coming years.”

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