Connie Evingson belongs to a select circle of jazz artists who have established the Twin Cities as their professional base, alongside guitarist Joan Griffith, pianist Sanford Moore, and multi-reed player Dave Karr on saxophone, clarinet, and flute. Although her debut professional engagement occurred only in 1980, she had already appeared before audiences from the age of five through church and school choirs. Raised in a home filled with continuous music, she absorbed the sounds of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and Joe Williams, later adding Peggy Lee and Shirley Horn to her listening. After earning a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in both anthropology and music, she began performing at the Night Train, a modest St. Paul venue that launched an extensive career of stage work and studio recordings. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s she traveled to Japan, Italy, Portugal, and Finland as a member of the vocal ensemble Moore by Four.
In 1999 she appeared with Doc Severinsen for an Ellington program in which the veteran trumpeter led the Minnesota Orchestra, and she also presented a pair of concerts saluting her vocal idol Peggy Lee that same year. Additional engagements took her to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Art of Jazz Concert Series in Seattle, and the Cabaret Convention at New York’s Town Hall.
Evingson has released three albums under her own name—I Have Dreamed, Fever: A Tribute to Peggy Lee, and 1999’s Some Cats Know—on which she is joined by several prominent jazz figures, including a reunion with Severinsen. She has also contributed as a guest vocalist to Moore by Four’s Swing Fever (1991), Deck the Halls and Singin’ Joy to the World (1989), Witness (1995), and Red Hot Holidays (1998). The three recordings under her leadership display a vocalist willing to reshape lyrics imaginatively so they gain fresh appeal and become distinctly her own; combined with solid technical command, these qualities situate her among the leading jazz singers of the present day.
