Music for London UK- Melissa - Female Jazz Saxophonist and Vocalist currently based in London. Musicians Hire and Wedding Services Oxford,Surrey,London,Kent

Music for London - Jazz Function Bands-London based Female Jazz Artiste. Currently Based in London and available for events in Oxford, London, Surrey, the home counties and the rest of the UK and the surrounding areas. Musicians Hire and Wedding Services in Oxford London and Surrey.

> Female Jazz Vocalist


	Born in London, Melissa James was raised within a family that bathed itself in music. Surrounded by her father’s bellowing tenor voice and his expansive collection of soul, blues and reggae 45’s, music took centre stage in her life. Still, she didn’t respond to her musical calling until much later on when she began studying at Sussex University. Melissa joined the university house band each week, performing a number of blues and jazz favourites. It was here that her love for jazz and singing bloomed and she began to finely craft her musical gift. Her technical skills would be honed later on with the help of a vocal professor who trained her using Seth Riggs’ renowned Speech Level Singing method.

	Melissa left university with a degree in Media Studies ready to pursue her media career which she would later abandon, but she couldn’t turn a blind eye on her passion for music. Although she returned to London she continued gigging in Brighton in order to get her fix of the music performance drug to which she’d become so heavily addicted. In the meantime she also began to familiarise herself with the jazz scene in London, building inroads with other great musicians with whom she began working.


	Tupelohoney

	Miss Celie's Blues

	In My Life

	Broken Dreams

	Angel from Montgomery



	Melissa acquired her first set of London listeners at the celebrated Half Moon pub in Putney that frequently features live acts. On stopping by one afternoon to hear the house jazz band, she introduced herself to the musicians and was given the opportunity to join them on a couple of songs. To her surprise, she silenced the house with her stirring interpretation of God Bless the Child. It was from this point that she began working regularly with The Half Moon band and with other great musicians. Later she staged with the well-known British saxophonist Stan Robinson who has toured with Aretha Franklin, and she fronted big bands at London’s famous 100 Club.

	Speaking about her rendition of Peel Me a Grape, one critic said she “makes your hair curl”. It’s her mellifluous tones and rich vibrato that she employs to colour her personalised repertoire which provoke responses like these. She uses her range well, stretching her vocals to a perfectly pitched far-reaching note and warmly embracing the sandpapery bass of her voice to coat her words in velvety splendour.

Back in London again after a three year stint in Paris, Melissa is keen to start finding a place for herself among the local clubs. Playing recently in Trafalgar Square and Soho Square at the 2005 Jazz on the Streets Festival, she had audiences eating out of her hand. It certainly won’t be long before her shows here produce an effect similar to that of those she performed in Paris. She’s continually developing her style; she’s just as at ease gently murmuring a handful of torch-lit Billie Holiday standards as she is singing a soulful blues or a folk song. Her stylistic influences come as much from Joni Mitchell and Natalie Merchant as they do from the vocal talents of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Placing this diverse vocalist is a difficult task. Melissa sits quite easily under the jazz vocalist umbrella as she does under the soul, blues and folk banner. Although she professes that she doesn’t want to be labelled. “I like all of these styles,” she says with a glowing smile, “I don’t want to be boxed-in because I’m as much jazz as I am folk as I am soul and blues. I take a song that I like – no matter what it is – and give it my personal touch. I create my own standards. And I sing my own words and thoughts too. For me, that’s a large part of being musical.”