Queen Esther

Described as “...the unknown queen of Americana…” and “...a Black Lucinda Williams...a brutal, original, explosive singer..." (Vanity Fair), Queen Esther is a playwright, vocalist, solo performer, producer, songwriter and musician. A member of Actors Equity, SAG/AFTRA, The Dramatists Guild and the Recording Academy, she is a 2022 Artist Fellow with the National Arts Club and a 2022-2024 Playwright In Residence at the WP Theater “Pipeline” Play Lab.

Her self-penned solo shows include The Moxie Show, Queen Esther: Unemployed Superstar and The Big Payback. Blackbirding, a solo show developed at Gettysburg National Military Park about The Civil War from a Black feminist perspective, is currently under development, along with The Billie Holiday Project, a musical based on Zora Neale Hurston’s newly discovered short stories and Lady Day’s lost classics, and The Tears of a Megyn, a serio-comic romp about police brutality, black feminism and white privilege.

She has toured extensively and recorded with harmelodic guitar icon James “Blood” Ulmer in many incarnations, including a recent European tour with his seminal band Odyssey. Performances and/or recordings include Speedball Baby, Mona’s Hot Five, Eyal Vilner Big Band, Burnt Sugar Arkestra, Michael Arenella and his Dreamland Orchestra, Richard Barone (The Bongos), Elliot Sharp (as the alt-blues duo Hoosegow), Swingadelic, LaLa Brooks (The Crystals), Dusty Wright, The Hot Toddies, Dan Levinson’s Jass Band, The New York Jazzharmonic and The Dirtbombs, amongst many others.

Recent highlights: A Black Americana performance at The Obama Foundation Summit; a supporting role in Taylor Mac’s jazz opera The Hang; a western swing project The Black Rose of Texas (featuring Queen Esther, Kat Edmonson and Synead Cidney Nichols) at Lincoln Center’s 2022 Summer for the City – with a workshop at Jazz at Lincoln Center and a sold out weekend at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.

Called “...a minor masterpiece…” (LIRA), her self-produced Black Americana release Gild The Black Lily (2021) – the fourth album on her imprint EL Recordings – is garnering stellar reviews and airplay worldwide as her 2018 TED Talk -- The True Origins of Country Music -- continues to reverberate throughout the Americana community.