Event

Tiffany Austin at the Sound Room

Tiffany Austin had sung on three continents around her native Los Angeles while attending college, then for a year in London, and eventually for five and a half years in Tokyo before setting music aside upon being accepted in 2009 at the University of California's Boalt School of Law in Berkeley. Yet the itch left by the music bug never went away, and a year into her law studies, she enrolled on a full scholarship at the nearby Jazzschool (now the California Jazz Conservatory), where her refreshingly original singing style attracted the attention of such innovative young San Francisco Bay Area bandleaders as bassist Marcus Shelby and tenor saxophonist Howard Wiley. Although she did earn a Juris Doctorate in 2012, while her peers were taking the bar exam Austin decided instead to devote her life to her first love.

Regarded as one of the fastest rising jazz singers in Northern California with a tradition rooted yet thoroughly modern style, Austin is now stepping further forward with her debut CD, Nothing But Soul,on her own Con Alma Music label. The album is the outgrowth of a November 2013 SFJAZZ "Hotplate" concert for which she reimagined compositions by the great American songwriter Hoagy Carmichael. For the recording, which was produced by saxophonist Howard Wiley, Tiffany was joined by bassist Ron Belcher, drummer Sly Randolph, and Glen Pearson, one of the busiest and perhaps most versatile pianists in the Bay Area.