Fay Victor
American vocalist and composer who coined 'freesong' and works across jazz, blues, opera, free improv, avant-garde, and modern classical music.
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via Wikipedia: Fay Victor · see source
Fay Victor is an American musician, composer, lyricist, and educator who started out singing traditional jazz and later moved into blues, opera, free improvisation, avant-garde, and modern classical music. Since resettling in New York in 2003, she has built a career across those genres and coined the term "freesong" to describe her vocal approach. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Jazz Times, and Down Beat.
Early life and career
Victor was born in Manhattan and spent early childhood in New York, Zambia, and Trinidad & Tobago before her teenage years on Long Island. After her mother's sudden death, she rediscovered music and released the club hit 'You Make Me Happy' in 1992, which was remixed by Todd Terry in 1993 and charted on the minor Billboard chart.
A three-month stint in Fukui City, Japan with pianist Bertha Hope led her to pursue a jazz singing career. In 1996 she settled in Amsterdam, touring through the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, the UK, Sweden, Russia, and India, and branching into blues, songwriting, and improvisation outside standard jazz. She moved back to New York City in 2003 and settled in the Western Catskills region of New York State in 2023.
Music
Victor coined the term 'freesong' for her vocal approach and has specialized in the repertoire of Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, and Herbie Nichols. She has been a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble since 2021.
She chairs the Advisory Board for the Jazz Leaders Fellowship via the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, an initiative funding black female and non-binary jazz artists, and has served as co-director of the TalkRace forum and member of the 'We Have Voice' collective. Her composition awards include the 2017 Herb Albert/Yaddo Fellow in Music Composition and a 2018 AIR in Composition for the Headlands Center for the Arts. In 2021 she published a chapter in John Zorn's Arcana X: Musicians on Music, and she has given masterclasses at the Guildhall School of Music, Lawrence University, and University of California, San Diego.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Fay Victor (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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