Joyce Cooling

Joyce Cooling, a guitarist with deep roots in the Bay Area, has long fused contemporary jazz, blues, and Brazilian traditions into an eclectic personal sound. Her crisp, funky phrasing echoes the approach of her idols Wes Montgomery and George Benson, and she rose to prominence on the festival circuit and the charts during the 1990s. Working closely with her longtime keyboardist and creative partner Jay Wagner, she has delivered several Billboard-charting releases, among them the 1999 album Keeping Cool, 2004’s This Girl’s Got to Play, and the 2019 EP Living Out Loud.

Born in 1969, Cooling spent her formative years in New Jersey and New York, where her family surrounded her with jazz, funk, rock, and classical music. After hearing Wes Montgomery, she took up the guitar and, largely self-taught, devoted countless hours to mastering solos; by her teens she was frequenting legendary spots such as the Village Vanguard to absorb every available lesson. She later moved to California and settled in San Francisco, where an early friendship with keyboardist Jay Wagner deepened her affinity for Brazilian jazz and bossa nova. In 1989 the pair recorded her first independent album, Cameo, which included guest vocals from Kitty Margolis and highlighted her relaxed, Brazilian-tinged style; the project earned substantial regional airplay.

Cooling eventually joined the Heads Up roster and issued her follow-up, Playing It Cool, in 1997. The record again spotlighted her partnership with Wagner and contained the smooth-jazz radio success “South of Market.” Building on that momentum, she received a Gavin Smooth Jazz Artist of the Year nomination, was named Jazz Trax Debut Artist of the Year, and won Best New Artist in the smooth-jazz category of a Jazziz Readers Poll. She followed with Keeping Cool in 1999, an album that reached the Top 40 of the Billboard Contemporary Jazz chart.

For 2001’s Third Wish, Cooling signed with GRP and continued exploring an instrumental blend of jazz and bossa nova. By then she had become a regular draw at major festivals, performing at the JVC Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, and the Stanford University Jazz Festival, while also appearing internationally in the Philippines, Guadalajara, Mexico, and Colombia. She has shared stages with luminaries including Joe Henderson, Stan Getz, Airto, Al Jarreau, Lee Ritenour, and Charlie Byrd.

In 2004 she moved to Narada for This Girl’s Got to Play, a contemplative set shaped by the aftermath of 9/11. She maintained that reflective tone on 2006’s Revolving Door, whose varied textures reflected her role as a national advocate for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). That same year she introduced her Music for the Mind initiative to raise funds and awareness for mental-health causes. In 2009 Cooling and Wagner again drew on their broad world-music influences for Global Cooling; the track “Grass Roots” climbed to number 21 on the Billboard Smooth Jazz Songs chart. After releasing a holiday album, she returned in 2019 with the EP Living Out Loud, which featured the Billboard Smooth Jazz Songs number-one hit “It’s So Amazing.”