1600 E 18th St
Kansas City
MO 64108
About this event
About Lucy Wijnands
With her serene, spirited tone, emerging jazz vocalist Lucy Wijnands is a dedicated enthusiast of jazz music from its beginnings to today. Now a recent graduate and the Ella Fitzgerald scholar at the Conservatory of Music at SUNY Purchase, Wijnands has been named the 1st place winner of the 4th annual Ella Fitzgerald Vocal Competition.
Wijnands has drawn inspiration from Jazz Studies director Peter Malinverni, voice professor Alexis Cole, Ingrid Jensen and jazz icon, Jon Faddis, with whom she has performed at the Louis Armstrong Museum and Jazz Forum Arts, among other places. Wijnands has also received the 2020 President’s Award for Achievement for the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music as well as a Downbeat Student Music Award as Outstanding Jazz Vocal Soloist. In the fall of 2020, Wijnands performed in Tokyo, Japan, serving as an ambassador for Purchase College as their Ella Fitzgerald Scholar and recipient of the President’s Award of Achievement.
Wijnands has completed a five month residency with the Birdland Big Band, directed by David Dejesus and has performed with musicians as acclaimed as Joe Lovano and Kenny Washington. In 2016, marking the beginning of her professional jazz studies, she appeared in concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room.
Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, she got her start performing with her father, master of stride piano, Bram Wijnands. From a very young age, she sang with her father in many jazz clubs in Kansas City, including the Majestic Steakhouse, the Blue Room, Green Lady Lounge, as well as the Endless Mountain Musical Festival in Pennsylvania. In the summer of 2017, she and her father toured in Europe, enriching her musical scopes. The two toured together again in the Netherlands in the summer of 2019, including special performances at the Binnenhof in The Hague, followed by their duo debut at the Birdland Theater in New York.
Once relocating from Kansas City to New York in 2013, Lucy studied with renowned vocalist, Anne Phillips. While attending Hastings High school, she participated in numerous school bands, musical productions and All-State jazz ensembles. She was nominated for a Maestro Award by the Philadelphia Heritage Festival in high school. Wijnands is now working on her debut album, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with an interdisciplinary approach to jazz music. Wijnands looks forward to keep creating, sharing and singing.
About Bram Wijnands
In 1991, Bram Wijnands came to Kansas City to perform at the ‘City Light Jazz Club’. He is a graduate from the Conservatory of Amsterdam. Born in Eindhoven, Holland, he became interested at an early age in Stride piano, Boogie Woogie and Swing. Bram became a master of Stride piano and the stylings of Erroll Garner while studying in Amsterdam.
Mr. Wijnands extensively studied the arranging styles of Swing music, particularly Kansas City Swing, and Boogie Woogie (Barrelhouse) piano. Former mayor Cleaver II proclaimed him Kansas City’s Ambassador of Swing after performing at Carnegie Hall in 1998, naming April 6 ‘Bram Wijnands Day’. He taught for 15 years at UMKC’s Jazz Division alongside Bobby Watson which led to a collaboration at Jazz At Lincoln Center in 2005 where Mr. Wijnands performed his arrangements and compositions in the Kansas City Swing style.
Over the years he has performed with many different artists like Deborah Brown, Bobby Watson, The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Bob Kindred, Dukes Boys, The U.S. Coast Guard Band, Slide Hampton, Richard Ross, Milt Trenier, The Scamps, David Grossman, many acclaimed European musicians and now also with his daughter Lucy, a great talent in her own right.
Concert tours have continuously included locations such as: The Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Russia, Cyprus, Hungary, Romania and The United States where, in addition to performing, he is also more and more in demand for giving Masterclasses.
A big part of his life has been arranging which he does for different ensembles, for instance the EMMF orchestra conducted by Stephen Gunzenhauser, and for his own Swingtet. With that ensemble the forties come back to life. Bram Wijnands is an Artist in Residence with the Endless Mountain Music Festival since 2013 after performing for the EMMF as a guest artist since 2009 and an award winning artist with the NEA.