November 6 to All Souls at Sundown:

Carolyn Leonhart, vocalist and
Wayne Escoffery, saxophone

A singer of “stunning intelligence” with a voice that is “absolute magic” (Jazz Times), vocalist Carolyn Leonhart’s critically acclaimed debut album Steal the Moon (2000) was followed by this year’s New 8th Day. Recepient of Downbeat magazine’s Best College Jazz Vocalist award, Carolyn has been lead back-up vocalist for three of Steely Dan’s world tours and two albums, including the multi-Grammy award-winning Two Against Nature. “Ms. Leonhart...has got precision; people compare the timbre of her voice to the young Ella Fitzgerald’s.” (John Pareles, The New York Times).

Saxophonist Wayne Escoffery earned a Masters degree from the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at the New England Conservatory of Music. A “young, self-assured, hard-swinging tenor saxophonist” (Ben Ratliff, The New York Times), he has toured with Herbie Hancock and Eric Reed, and also performs with his own big band, which performed Ellington’s Night Creature at Lincoln Center with the American Symphony Orchestra. He has released two CDs as a leader: Times Change (2001) and Intuition (2004). Wayne first appeared at All Souls at Sundown in 2001.

This Evening's Poet:

An American poet of unmatched strength and vitality, Emily Dickinson “has something in her lyrics that recalls the swiftness and compression of Shakespeare’s mind” (Harold Bloom, The Best Poems of the English Language).