Shenandoah University
Silver Spring, MD
Soul and Jazz Diva, Alison Crockett, has been in the worldwide the music scene as a vocalist and educator for decades. She has been described as a “Mix [of] Nina Simone’s urgency, Betty Carter’s chops and Jill Scott’s sass...” She is a prolific Jazz, soul, and electronica vocalist and has been featured on dozens of recordings including King Britt's Neo-soul creation, “When the Funk hits the Fan”, the acid jazz and hip hop mash up of Us3's “An Ordinary Day in and Unusual Place”, and her chart topping neo-soul recording “On Becoming a Woman...” She is a genre bending artist moving through different music styles as it suits her. The “Return of Diva Blue” was a electronica remix record, “Bare” an acoustic singer songwriter piano based record, “Mommy, What’s a Depression?” a political mashup of funk, jazz, electronica and soul originals and jazz standards, and “Obrigada” an EP recorded in Brazil of originals and Bossa nova classics. Alison has always been a craftsman, seeing the musical world through new eyes each time. She has toured the world several times over, working and recording with multiple artists in various genres.
Alison has also spent the last two decades of her life promoting music and jazz vocal education. As a university professor first at Temple University and then at George Washington University, she has trained jazz and pop vocalists privately and through the jazz choral ensemble, GW JiVE. She has worked with school age children as the Musical Director of Highbridge Voices, writing, arranging and conducting over 250 children in three choirs from the Bronx, NY, to being the Choral Music instructor at the prestigious Fillmore Arts Center in Washington, DC for over 12 years. During that time she has had a vibrant private studio and taught multiple adult workshops on the craft of singing jazz. In her last year of teaching at Fillmore, she started to center on jazz choral education, exposing students to the joy of swinging and scatting and understanding the history and culture of Jazz music. This was the genus of Generations of Vocal Jazz the performance festival. This program initially culminated in a performance featuring singers from the Baby Boomers and Generation X (Capitol Voices of Levine School of Music) to college age students (GW JiVE jazz choir), all the way to elementary ages grades 3 - 5 (Fillmore Jazz Choir). Alison Is presently a faculty member of the CCM Institute teaching the Roots of Black American Vocal Music and at Shenedoah University Vocal Pedagogy department working with graduate and doctoral students. She is also the creator and exectutive director of Generations of Vocal Jazz, an organization dedicated to creating intergenerational connections through the performance and study of vocal and choral jazz music, developing The New Generation Jazz Choir, partnerships with schools, teacher trainings, and performances, most notably the Generations of Vocal Jazz performance festival, held annually at George Washington University.
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CANCELED: Rhythm Creates the Story for Jazz Vocal Improvisation
Friday, January 10, 2025
12:00 PM - 12:50 PM EST
