Tierney Sutton

Tierney Sutton (born June 28, 1963) is an American jazz singer.

Sutton was born in Wisconsin and was educated at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to attending Berklee, Tierney Sutton attended Nicolet High School in the Milwaukee metro area. Along with Jane Monheit and Roberta Gambarini, she was a semi-finalist in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Vocal Competition in 1998, losing to Teri Thornton. Her first solo album Introducing Tierney Sutton was nominated for Indie Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Her albums since then have been released under the Telarc jazz label.

Dancing in the Dark, "inspired by the music of Frank Sinatra", debuted in the Billboard Top 10 Jazz Albums and remained on the charts for over 15 weeks. Sutton performed to rave reviews and commercial success at New York’s legendary Oak Room. She debuted at Carnegie Hall in February 2005, soloing with the New York Pops Orchestra.

In December 2005 I'm with the Band was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Jazz Vocal Album and won JazzWeek’s Vocalist of the Year Award.

Sutton currently performs with pianist Christian Jacob, bassists Trey Henry and Kevin Axt, and drummer Ray Brinker. In 2008, Sutton became the Vocal Department Chair at Los Angeles Music Academy in Pasadena, California.

Despite her support by mainstream critics, some jazz aficionados are discouraged by what they claim is Sutton's cold presentation and her lack of emotional connection to what she performs. They say she seems to rely more on tricks of the trade rather than digging into the emotional content of the music.

She has been a Baha'i since 1981 and explains her arrangement style of jazz as "The way we arrange our music is based on the principle of consultation, and our band is very much run on Baha'i principles. So there is very much a sense with everybody in the band that what we do is essentially a spiritual thing."^[1]

She has recently been performing in small-venue concerts as a trio with Hubert Laws (flute) and Larry Koonse (guitar). In many of the numbers performed by the trio, Tierney plays more like an instrument than merely a vocalist.

Discography

• 1998 - Introducing Tierney Sutton
• 2000 - Unsung Heroes
• 2001 - Blue in Green
• 2002 - Something Cool
• 2004 - Dancing in the Dark
• 2005 - I'm with the Band
• 2007 - On the Other Side
• 2009 - Desire

Trivia

• The song "I think of you" on the Dancing in the Dark album clearly borrows the E-flat major theme in the first movement of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto.

External links

• Tierney Sutton's web site

References

1. ^ Musicians in performance - January 26, 2007