Roberta Gambarini

Roberta Gambarini entered the world in Turin, Italy, where parents passionate about music—who had originally encountered each other at a jazz performance—raised her amid constant playback of her father’s extensive record holdings. Louis Armstrong provided her earliest vocal model, yet she rapidly absorbed the styles of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, and Billie Holiday, along with blues figures such as Mahalia Jackson and Bessie Smith. At twelve she took up the clarinet, but the expressive range of her clear alto soon prompted a shift to singing; by seventeen she was already appearing in clubs. The following year she relocated to Milan in search of broader professional prospects, and a third-place result in a nationwide jazz radio contest supplied the visibility that launched her across Europe, where she performed at festivals and alongside figures including Hammond organist Emmanuel Bex in 1997.

A scholarship awarded in 1998 enabled two years of study at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Shortly after settling there she placed third in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, trailing Teri Thornton and Jane Monheit. Although the achievement did not yield a recording deal as it had for Monheit, the attendant performance opportunities convinced her to abandon Boston for New York in pursuit of deeper immersion in the jazz community. By 2006, after sustained work had made her a cult favorite within New York’s jazz circles—yet every label had declined her proposed album—she established Groovin’ High to issue her American debut, Easy to Love. The standards collection drew critical praise that earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album, listed alongside Diana Krall and Nancy Wilson among others.