Karrin Allyson

Karrin Allyson stands out as an expressive jazz vocalist whose reputation rests on her poetic handling of ballads and her agile vocalese when reworking instrumental jazz compositions. She surfaced in Kansas City during the 1990s and gained notice through her performances of standards and bossa nova pieces, as well as contemporary pop material drawn from Randy Newman, Janis Ian, and James Taylor. Regarded as one of the strongest jazz singers of her generation, she collected several Grammy nominations, among them Best Jazz Vocal Album citations for Ballads: Remembering John Coltrane in 2001 and 'Round Midnight in 2011.

She was born in Great Bend, Kansas, and spent her formative years in Omaha, Nebraska, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where she studied classical piano and sang as a folksinger while playing in the all-female rock band Tomboy. After earning a piano degree from the University of Nebraska in 1987, she began appearing regularly at her uncle’s nightclub in Kansas City and chose to make that city her permanent base. Concord Jazz signed her, and she released her first album, I Didn't Know About You, in 1992; the recording brought early recognition, including a mention in Playboy’s annual readers’ poll next to Ella Fitzgerald and Shirley Horn. She soon assembled a core group of Kansas City players—pianist Paul Smith, guitarists Danny Embrey and Rod Fleeman, bassist Bob Bowman, and drummer Todd Strait—who appeared on most of her subsequent sessions.

Allyson maintained a steady release schedule through the rest of the decade with Sweet Home Cookin’ in 1993, Azure-Té in 1994, and two projects in 1996, Collage and Daydream. Her final album of the 1990s, From Paris to Rio, appeared in 1999 and marked a departure: she sang lyrics in French and Portuguese across a wide stylistic range that included a Jacques Brel number, samba selections, and bossa nova tunes. Ballads: Remembering John Coltrane, issued in 2001, became one of her most celebrated and successful recordings and earned a pair of Grammy nominations. For In Blue in 2002 she chose mostly outside material from Mose Allison, Joni Mitchell, George and Ira Gershwin, Blossom Dearie, Abbey Lincoln, Oscar Brown, Jr., and Bonnie Raitt, writing only one of the thirteen tracks herself; she followed a similar path two years later on Wild for You, revisiting songs by Cat Stevens, James Taylor, and Mitchell. Footprints arrived in 2006 and received another Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

Throughout her career Allyson has appeared at major American venues, among them an all-star Ella Fitzgerald tribute at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and has performed with both the Kansas City and Omaha symphonies. In 2008 she released Imagina: Songs of Brasil, offering interpretations of works by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Edú Lobo, Torquato Neto, and Pedro Caetano, then toured the project for the following year before pausing. She returned to the studio in 2010 to record 'Round Midnight, a set of jazz, pop, and Broadway standards by Duke Ellington, Stephen Sondheim, Paul Simon, and Bill Evans; the album, issued by Concord Jazz in 2011, was the first on which she played all the keyboards. The holiday collection Yuletide Hideaway followed in 2013. She next collaborated with pianist Kenny Barron and bassist John Patitucci on Many a New Day in 2015, an album devoted to Rodgers & Hammerstein songs. For her 2019 release, Shoulder to Shoulder: Centennial Tribute to Women's Suffrage, Allyson assembled an all-female ensemble to reinterpret pre-suffrage material from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.