On August 22, vocalist Stella Cole released her new Decca Records album, It’s Magic, and on Friday, September 5, she’ll be performing some selections from it at the South Orange Performing Arts Center. It’s part of a multi-month tour that will also include New York’s Sony Hall on October 2 and 3 and Tarrytown, NY’s Jazz Forum on February 20 and 21, 2026.
The 26-year-old Cole’s video performance of Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow” during the pandemic went viral, and her career has skyrocketed since then. When she appeared at the London and Cambridge Jazz Festivals in November 2024, UK Jazz News‘ Woody Caan wrote: “Some of her online fans compared her to Judy Garland, praise indeed, but listening now to her fresh cover of ‘Over the Rainbow’, I could believe blue birds really fly beyond the rainbow.”
When WRTI Radio’s Nate Chinen heard her at Philadelphia’s City Winery in September 2024, he said she, “exudes a dramatic grasp of her material that recalls the likes of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand more than any jazz or coffeehouse crooner.”
The title track of It’s Magic made Doris Day a star after she sang it in the 1948 movie, Romance on the High Seas. Other selections include Meredith Wilson’s “Till There Was You” (from The Music Man), Ray Noble’s “The Touch of Your Lips”, and Rube Bloom and Johnny Mercer’s “Fools Rush In”.
Cole’s September 5th performance will open SOPAC’s 20th season. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. For tickets or more information, log onto sopacnow.org or call (973) 313-2787.