On Wednesday, October 11th @ 2pm, Excuse My French speaks with vocalist, Veronica Swift, ahead of her performance at SF Jazz on October 12th.
Swift was raised in Charlottesville, VA in a family of musicians – her father is the late bebop pianist Hod O’Brien and her mother is jazz singer and educator Stephanie Nakasian. Swift recorded her first album, Veronica’s House of Jazz, when she was 9 years old and began touring with her parents around that same time. At age 11 she appeared in the Jazz at Lincoln Center series Women in Jazz and went on to continue her studies earning a bachelor’s degree in Jazz Voice at University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. After graduation she moved to New York City performing Saturday nights at the legendary club, Birdland. She has continued to record her own material, collaborate and tour with such artists as Chris Botti, Benny Green, Wynton Marsalis, and Michael Feinstein.
Swift describes her new self-titled album, Veronica Swift, as “transgenre.” “I grew up immersed in the culture of jazz music, blessed to have had some of the greats as mentors and I felt a deep familial duty to uphold that tradition,” she continues “But as rooted in jazz as I’ve been, there’s a uniquely visceral power in rock and soul music that’s always fueled my creative passion, and rather than mask or confine that part of my identity, the people I admire most show themselves unabashedly and that’s the kind of tradition I want to be a part of.”
