Born in Harlem and raised in a musical family in Brooklyn, song stylist Vinnie Knight sang from an early age in church choirs and school plays. She studied dance with La Rocque Bey Dance Theater and Henry LeTang School of Tap, and studied voice and music at Juilliard and Kingsborough Community College. Her professional career began with Arthur Prysock, who mentored her and got her booked with the Sidney Bean trio, a steady, seasonal engagement in Bermuda that would last for eighteen years. During that time she also worked the New York club scene, at the Cajun Restaurant, Café Society, The Rainbow Room, Sweetwaters, Metropolis Club, Birdland, Windows of the World at the World Trade Center, the Lenox Lounge, West Inn Café, the Blue Note, Tattoo Supper Club, Edison Supper Club, and throughout New Jersey, Connecticut, and upstate New York. She starred with Oliver Jackson and the Harlem Big Band in tours of Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and Turkey. She was booked on the SS Norway and starred with the great trumpeter Clark Terry, and also worked with all-star groups in Kenya and Japan.  Ms. Vinnie Knight’s smooth, velvety, mysteriously angelic voice has the sophistication of the great Sarah Vaughan, the earthiness of Pearl Bailey, and the seductiveness of Billie Holiday.

This event will stream on the Jazz Foundation and Jazz Museum Facebook pages and the Museum YouTube Channel.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the Howard Gilman Foundation.