The New Jersey Performing Arts Center has announced the five finalists in this year’s Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Competition. They are: Diamond Franklin, Candace Jones, Kate Kortum, Julia Moscardini, and Emma Smith.
Franklin is a classically-trained mezzo-soprano vocalist, songwriter and recording artist. A native of Philadelphia, she has a Bachelor of Music degree from Cairn University School of Music in Langhorne, PA.
Jones, now based in Miami, was a weekly headliner at Harlem’s Cotton Club. She won first place for classical voice in the NAACP’s Act-So Regional Competition and has starred in the touring companies of Dreamgirls, Ain’t Misbehavin’, and Hair.
Kortum, originally from Houston, is a graduate of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and The Juilliard School. In May, when she performed in Wayne, NJ, with the Big Swingin’ Big Band , she energized the audience with the Nat King Cole hit, “The Late Late Show”, the Hoagy Carmichael/Johnny Mercer standard, “Skylark”, and Lionel Hampton’s “My Little Red Top”. (See “Jazz Futures” in the Latest News section of njjs.org).
Moscardini, from Buenos Aires, was mentored by the late vocalist Sheila Jordan. She has performed with jazz artists such as alto saxophonist Antonio Hart, drummer Carl Allen, and pianist Cyrus Chestnut and teaches at the Escuela de Musica Contemporanea (part of the Berklee College of Music’s International Network).
Smith has performed with the Quincy Jones Orchestra and the Jeremy Pelt/Wayne Escoffery Quintet and is part of the vocal harmony group, The Puppini Sisters. Reviewing her new La Reserve Records album, Bitter Orange, for the UK Jazz Journal, Trevor Hodgett called her, “an utterly persuasive communicator of a lyric . . .she interprets the material with wonderful panache, reshaping the songs as required to suit her personality and vision.”
These five finalists emerged from nearly 200 entrants from 27 different countries. On November 23, they will compete on the NJPAC stage in front of a live audience and a panel of judges: vocalists Ann Hampton Callaway, Nnenna Freelon, and Janis Siegel; trumpeter Jon Faddis; and bassist Christian McBride. Host for the event is WBGO Radio’s Gary Walker, and the competing vocalists will be accompanied by guitarist Peter Bernstein, pianist Emmet Cohen, drummer Bryan Carter, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.