Meredith d'Ambrosio

Meredith d'Ambrosio has woven together parallel paths in music and visual creation. Her work as a jazz vocalist showcases a dulcet, soft-toned tenor that shapes thoughtful and inventive readings of standards alongside original material, and she also commands the piano with skill. Though she has issued nearly 20 albums under her own name, d'Ambrosio maintains an international reputation as a visual artist whose award-winning watercolors, black pencil studies, and eggshell mosaics have appeared in shows ranging from New York to Paris and have adorned magazine covers, book jackets, and record sleeves. Her first recording came on the 1980 trio date Lost in His Arms, followed the next year by the solo album Another Time, where she both sang and played. Sunnyside welcomed her in 1985 with It's Your Dance, which included guitarist Kevin Eubanks and pianist Harold Danko; the imprint thereafter served as her primary home. She issued recordings nearly every year and earned international notice for releases including 1988's The Cove, 1991's Love Is Not a Game, and 2002's Love Is for the Birds. Performances took her across the United States and Europe, sometimes alone and sometimes alongside her late husband, pianist Eddie Higgins. Following 2006's Wishing on the Moon she turned her main attention to visual work, yet surfaced again in 2012 with the internationally celebrated By Myself, an album that featured only her voice and piano. Nearly ten years afterward, in 2021, she resumed recording as a vocalist on Sometime Ago; supported by a trio and a quartet, the collection mixed standards with originals.

Born in Boston to a musical household, d'Ambrosio grew up with a father who sang in big bands and a mother who played piano in nightclubs. Piano study and singing began for her at age six. At fifteen she sang "Prelude to a Kiss" with a studio band on Boston television. She attributes her achievements to an ability to focus and to manage nerves. Her initial paid jazz engagement occurred at seventeen when she joined Roger Kellaway's group at a Boston club.

After high school graduation, d'Ambrosio enrolled at the Boston Museum School in 1958 and 1959 on a fine-arts scholarship. She continued to work as a musician while painting. In 1959 she refined her eggshell mosaics method through paintings later reproduced in Beatrice Freeman-Lewis's book Making Mosaics. At nineteen she married in 1960 and gave birth to a daughter, yet the marriage ended after eighteen months and she returned to her parents' home. Income arrived through calligraphy commissions for wedding invitations, cards, envelopes, diplomas, citations, and illuminated scrolls. Evenings found her performing at the Beaconsfield Hotel's Hunt Room and, soon after, at The Charter House in Newton. The period proved difficult as she navigated extended custody proceedings with her former husband while striving to sustain herself as an artist and as a pianist and singer in local jazz venues.

In 1965 her friend Robin Hemingway escorted her to several nights of the John Coltrane Quartet at Boston's Jazz Workshop. After one performance d'Ambrosio joined Coltrane and Hemingway for breakfast. The saxophonist invited her to sing, and she did so. Deeply affected, he asked her to travel with the quartet to Japan. Feeling unprepared—she still viewed herself primarily as a visual artist and the mother of a preschool daughter—d'Ambrosio declined. More than a decade would pass before she entered a recording studio, and even then she doubted her capacity to complete the project.

Her piano tuner, employed at Longview Farm Recording Studios near Boston, had access to the facility for a day. He invited her to sing and accompany herself on piano, ostensibly for enjoyment. In a seven-hour session she recorded thirty-five songs; guitarist Norman Coles and pianist Ray Santisi joined on several tracks. Fifteen selections were assembled onto a master demo tape. D'Ambrosio appeared on the WGBH-FM program Music America to air the recording. Singer Johnny Hartman, also present for an interview, requested a copy to share with a producer in New York. Wil Morton of Shiah Records purchased the master and issued it as Lost in His Arms in 1980, quickly followed by Another Time in 1981. Both discs attracted notice from jazz radio programmers and reviewers.

Shortly thereafter Herb Wong of Palo Alto Records contacted her. He signed d'Ambrosio for 1982's Little Jazz Bird, which placed her before a quintet containing Phil Woods, Hank Jones, and Manny Albam plus a string quartet. The album received widespread praise and airplay, enabling her first domestic and international tours. She joined Sunnyside in 1984—her label ever since—and delivered It's Your Dance in 1985 with guitarist Kevin Eubanks. Pianist Harold Danko handled the keyboard chair on half the tracks while d'Ambrosio played on the remainder. Between 1982 and 1985 she placed in the Top Five of the Talent Deserving Wider Recognition category in the DownBeat International Critics Jazz Poll for Female Vocalist and captured the award for five straight years from 1987 through 1991.

While performing at a Cape Cod club with Dave McKenna in 1987, pianist Eddie Higgins attended to hear d'Ambrosio after encountering her music on the radio. He invited her to join him for a pair of songs, and they completed the final set together. Eight weeks later they became engaged. D'Ambrosio recorded the acclaimed The Cove in October 1987 with a supporting cast that included Fred Hersch, Lee Konitz, and Michael Formanek. She and Higgins married on 28 July 1988, the first anniversary of their meeting, and The Cove appeared that October to consistently favorable notices.

Higgins served as d'Ambrosio's pianist and arranger on her next three albums—South to a Warmer Place (1989), Love Is Not a Game (1991), and Shadowland (1993)—and the pair enjoyed significant artistic and commercial success in both Europe and the United States. In 1994 she appeared as the featured guest on Marian McPartland's syndicated radio series Piano Jazz and recorded the solo collection Sleep Warm: Lullabies for Small and Bigger Children. The following year she released Beware of Spring!, leading a trio with bassist George Mraz and drummer Jeff Hirschfield. After a brief tour she recorded 1997's Silent Passion as a duo with guitarist Gene Bertoncini. The next year she completed Echo of a Kiss, her last album of the twentieth century. She arranged the fourteen-track program of originals and standards, fronting a quartet that featured bassist Jay Leonhart, pianist Mike Renzi, and drummer Terry Clarke.

Out of Nowhere appeared in 2000 and earned her a nomination for the Django award from the French Academy of Jazz as Best Female Jazz Vocalist. The year 2002 proved especially productive: Sunnyside reissued her earlier catalog while she issued the new studio album Love Is for the Birds with a sextet. No further recordings followed until 2006, when she produced the all-original quintet program Wishing on the Moon. After touring she stepped away from the studio for an extended period, concentrating on painting while maintaining occasional performances. Following Higgins's death in 2009 she devoted herself exclusively to her art and to teaching.

D'Ambrosio returned in 2012 with the fully solo By Myself, a set of fourteen compositions by Arthur Schwartz (1900–1984). It marked her first album devoted to a single composer, and at the time she regarded it as her final recording. Live appearances became rare as she preferred to focus on visual work exhibited throughout the United States and Europe.

She nevertheless continued to perform and compose privately, frequently in collaboration with pianist Randy Halberstadt. In October 2019 she documented those songs with Halberstadt, bassist Daryl Johns, drummer Steve Johns, and guest trumpeter and flugelhornist Don Sickler. The resulting album, Sometime Ago, was released in 2021 to mark her eightieth birthday.