My next opportunity to hear Paris was in March, during her month-long Sunday night stint down the block at Rossi’s Blue Star Room, with fellow students on bass and drums. Now I was hooked. Paris has chops to burn, speed, power, and artistic inspiration bubbling up from the springs of McCoy Tyner and Ahmad Jamal.

Connie Evingson is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has appeared in clubs and concert halls across the U.S., in Europe and Japan, and has been a guest soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony conducted by Doc Severinsen, and the Vocalessence Music Series with Bobby McFerrin. She is the creator of the original stage production, Fever, A Tribute to Peggy Lee, which she has performed at theatres across the country and excerpted at New York's Town Hall and is co-host of Singers and Standards on KBEM, the Twin Cities' premier jazz radio station. She was featured on the Smithsonian's Jazz Singers radio series, Jazziz Magazine's Vocals on Fire CD, and has released four CDs on Minnehaha Music, I Have Dreamed, Fever - A Tribute to Peggy Lee, Some Cats Know, and The Secret of Christmas. Her latest disc, Let it Be Jazz - Connie Evingson Sings the Beatles, produced by Minnehaha Music for the Summit label, was released September, '03. Also released this fall, Sharper Image's new compilation disc New Sirens of Song features a track from Connie's CD Fever - A Tribute to Peggy Lee, along with tracks by Diana Krall, Norah Jones, Stacy Kent and others. Connie's tribute to jazz elders CD Some Cats Know, released in 2000 with guest artists Al Grey, Ray Brown, Toots Thielemanns, Jack McDuff and Doc Severinsen and her latest release, Let it Be Jazz, both charted in the Top 50 for 8 weeks in the U.S. and Canada.

Evingson has been a member of the vocal jazz ensemble Moore By Four since 1986, with whom she has toured the U.S., Europe and Japan, appeared on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, and opened for Harry Connick, Jr., Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Dizzy Gillespie. Her voice is often heard on TV and radio commercials for clients such as Target, Chili's, Mervyn's, Andersen Windows and others. Connie was among the top 15 contestants in the 1998 Thelonius Monk Vocal Competition and received the McKnight Artist Fellowship Award in 2000.

Photograph courtesy of Howard Gitelson