Dee Dee Bridgewater
(born May 27, 1950) is an American Jazz singer. She is a two-time Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter, as well as a Tony Award - winning stage actress. and Host of NPR's Syndicated Radio show "JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater". She is a United Nations Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
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DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER TICKETS
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Biography
Born
Denise Eileen Garrett
in
Memphis, Tennessee, she grew up in
Flint, Michigan. Her father, Matthew Garrett, was a jazz trumpeter and teacher at Manassas High School, and through his play, Denise was exposed to jazz early on. At the age of sixteen, she was a member of a rock and
rhythm'n'blues trio, singing in clubs in
Michigan. At 18, she studied at the
Michigan State University before she went to the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With their jazz band, she toured the
Soviet Union in 1969. The next year, she met trumpeter
Cecil Bridgewater, and after their marriage, they moved to
New York City, where Cecil played in
Horace Silver's band.
In the early 1970s, Bridgewater joined the
Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra as the lead vocalist.
[1] This marked the beginning of her jazz career, and she performed with many of the great jazz musicians of the time, such as
Sonny Rollins,
Dizzy Gillespie,
Dexter Gordon,
Max Roach,
Rahsaan Roland Kirk and others. Performed at the
Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. In 1974, her first own album, entitled
Afro Blue
, appeared, and she also performed on Broadway in the
musical The Wiz
. For her role as
Glinda the Good Witch she won a
Tony Award in 1975 as "best featured actress", and the musical also won the 1976
Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.
She subsequently appeared in several other stage productions. After touring
France in 1984 with the musical
Sophisticated Ladies
, she moved to
Paris in 1986. The same year saw her in
Lady Day
as
Billie Holiday, for which role she was nominated for the
Laurence Olivier Award. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she returned from the world of musical to jazz. She performed at the
Montreux Jazz Festival in 1990, and four years later, she finally collaborated with
Horace Silver, whom she had long admired, and released the album
Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver
. Performed also at the
San Francisco Jazz Festival (1996). Her 1997 tribute album
Dear Ella
won her the 1998
Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, and the 1998 album
Live at Yoshi's
was also worth a Grammy nomination. Performed again at the
Monterey Jazz Festival (1998). She has also explored on
This is New
(2002) the songs of
Kurt Weill, and, on her next album
J'ai Deux Amours
(2005), the French Classics.
Her album
Red Earth
, published in 2007, features Africa-inspired themes and contributions by numerous musicians from the
West African nation of
Mali. Performed at the
San Francisco Jazz Festival (2007).
December 8, 2007, will perform with the
Terence Blanchard Quintet at the prestigious
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in
Washington, D.C.,
[2] and will perform in
Switzerland,
Russia,
Austria,
France,
Italy,
Hungary,
Spain, at the end of 2007.
In 1992, she guest-starred in an episode of Highlander the Series entitled "The Beast Below".
Family life
Bridgewater is mother to three children, Tulani Bridgewater (from her marriage to Cecil Bridgewater), China Moses (from her marriage to theater, film and television director
Gilbert Moses) and Gabriel Durand (from her current marriage to French concert promoter Jean-Marie Durand).
Selective awards and recognitions
Grammy history
- Career Wins: 2 [3]
- Career Nominations: 7
Dee Dee Bridgewater Grammy Award History
|
Year
| Category
| Title
| Genre
| Label
| Result
| Notes
|
1989
| Best Jazz Vocal Performance - Female
| Live in Paris
| Jazz
| MCA
| Nominee
|
1994
| Best Jazz Vocal Performance
| Keeping Tradition
| Jazz
| Polygram
| Nominee
|
1996
| Best Jazz Vocal Performance
| Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver
| Jazz
| Verve
| Nominee
|
1998
| Best Jazz Vocal Performance
| Dear Ella
| Jazz
| Verve
| Winner
|
1998
| Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s)
| Dear Ella
| Jazz
| Verve
| Winner
| for the song "Cotton Tail"
|
2001
| Best Jazz Vocal Album
| Live at Yoshi's
| Jazz
| Verve
| Nominee
|
2005
| Jazz Vocal Album
| J'ai Deux Amours
| Jazz
| DDB
| Nominee
|
2007
| Jazz Vocal Album
| Red Earth
| Jazz
| DDB
| Nominee
|
Awards
Bridgewater is the first American to be inducted to the Haut Conseil de la Francophonie. She has received the Award of Arts and Letters in France. She also won the 1975 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance in The Wiz
.
Selective discography
Year
| Title
| Genre
| Label
| Billboard [4]
|
1974
| Afro Blue
| Jazz
| Trio
|
|
1989
| Live in Paris
| Jazz
| MCA
|
|
1992
| In Montreux
| Jazz
| Verve
|
|
1993
| Keeping Tradition
| Jazz
| Verve
|
|
1995
| Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver
| Jazz
| Verve
| 13
|
1997
| Dear Ella
| Jazz
| Verve
| 5
|
2000
| Live at Yoshi's
| Jazz
| Verve
| 20
|
2002
| This is New
| Jazz
| Verve
| 7
|
2005
| J'ai Deux Amours
| Jazz
| DDB
| 16
|
2007
| Red Earth
| Jazz
| DDB
| 23
|
Guest Vocalist
1974- "Love From The Sun": with Norman Connors (Buddah records).
References
- Larkin, Colin. ''The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music'', Guinness, page 547, (1995) - ISBN 1561591769
- Kennedy Center: The Movie Music of Spike Lee and Terence Blanchard
- Album Awards List
- Billboard Artist Chart History: Dee Dee Bridgewater