Ann Hampton Callaway

Ann Hampton Callaway, recognized as a jazz and traditional pop singer-songwriter, grew up in Chicago as the daughter of television journalist John Callaway and vocal coach Shirley Callaway and as the sister of Broadway performer Liz Callaway. Her first recorded work appeared on releases from Ben Bagley’s Painted Smiles label, where she supplied bonus tracks for the CD reissues of Noel Coward Revisited in 1990, Cole Porter Revisited in 1991, and Alan Jay Lerner Revisited in 1992, and also performed on collections devoted to Shoestring Revue and Tallulah. On the Porter project the estate granted her the unprecedented right to set music to an unused lyric, “I Gaze in Your Eyes,” which then opened her self-titled debut album issued by DRG Records in 1992.

She composed and sang the weekly theme “The Nanny Named Fran” for the 1993 television comedy The Nanny. Her second solo album, Bring Back Romance, followed in 1994. In 1996 she and her sister issued the duet recording Sibling Revelry and later presented a stage show of the same name in London. Her third solo album, To Ella with Love, appeared later that year on After 9 Records and marked a stronger turn toward jazz. Barbra Streisand placed Callaway’s song “At the Same Time” on the chart-topping Higher Ground in 1997, the same year Callaway released her fourth solo album, After Ours, on Denon and the holiday set White Christmas on Capitol; Angel reissued the seasonal album as This Christmas in 1998. Streisand recorded another Callaway composition, “I’ve Dreamed of You,” for the September 1999 album A Love Like Ours. That October Sin-Drome issued Easy Living, and in December Callaway joined the Broadway cast of Swing!, an engagement that earned her a 2000 Tony nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical.

She signed with Shanachie Records, which released Signature in 2002 and Slow in 2004. Moving to Telarc Records, she issued Blues in the Night in 2006 and At Last in 2009. Her concert program The Streisand Songbook premiered with the Boston Pops in 2013 and received honors including the MAC Award for Show of the Year; she subsequently performed the show in concert halls throughout the United States. In 2014 she received the BroadwayWorld New York Cabaret Award for Performer of the Year. Also that year she released the tribute album From Sassy to Divine: The Sarah Vaughan Project, recorded with her longtime trio—pianist Ted Rosenthal, bassist Dean Johnson, and drummer Tim Horner—alongside guest trumpeter Randy Sandke and saxophonist Dick Oatts. McG Jazz issued the holiday album The Hope of Christmas in 2015, and BroadwayWorld named her Best Jazz Vocalist in 2016. In 2017 Callaway recorded her own version of “At the Same Time” and organized a global video-and-photo contest to collect simultaneous images for an accompanying music video. The following year she released Jazz Goes to the Movies and the politically charged single “Thoughts and Prayers.”