Arts & Jazz Festival

Revered as both a torchbearer and a storyteller, jazz vocalist Vanessa Rubin possesses a voice hailed with crystalline clarity, heart-like warmth, emotional depth and keen, burnished wisdom she can deliver with playful lioness sass. The Cleveland native brings a wealth of diverse influences to her vocal performances. From swing to bossa nova to blues, ballads and contemporary covers performed with small and large ensembles, Rubin’s interpretive ability to move through the Great American Songbook to modern jazz composers/arrangers like Tadd Dameron and Horace Silver to contemporary composers as Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers and Sting is masterful. “The Great American Songbook continues to expand with songs by outstanding composers who can paint pictures of the life of our times with their unique melodies and lyric that also stand the test of time,” Rubin asserts.

Rubin’s passion for rich musical stories is evidenced throughout her nine recordings as a leader, plus numerous guest appearances. A recipient of numerous awards and citations, she is most proud of a 2011 Kevin Klein Nomination for Best Actress in a Musical called Yesterdays: An Evening with Billie Holiday, in which she performed a one-woman show about the life and music of the iconic jazz singer. The Dream Is You, her most recent self-produced recording and the first all-vocal tribute to another native Clevelander known as “the romanticist of the bebop period,” Tadd Dameron, enthusiastically garnered a 2020 nomination at the 51st NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Jazz Album. Rubin continues to be a favorite at jazz clubs and festivals here in the US and abroad. Her work as a performing artist, writer, producer, clinician/educator at educational institutions, as well as her most recent 2021 endeavor, curator and producer of Sundown Jazz @ V’s Place, an outdoor summer performance jazz series in Cleveland, Ohio is ongoing.