August Wilson Center's Uhuru Jazz Series Continues With Singer Vanisha Gould

After two stellar performances at the 2022 Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival, composer/vocalist Vanisha Gould returns to Pittsburgh to perform in the latest installment of the Uhuru Jazz Series at The August Wilson African American Cultural Center (AWAACC), 980 Liberty Avenue, on Friday, February 10, at 7:00 pm.

Named for the Swahili word that translates to "freedom," the Uhuru Jazz Series pays homage to jazz as the embodiment of freedom, improvisation, discovery, liberation, and promise. Supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the series continues with multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow on June 22 and also featured saxophonist Tia Fuller and violinist Regina Carter in November and December, respectively.

To complement each concert, AWAACC commissioned Pittsburgh visual artist Makeba Rainey to create an original work of art in celebration of the Uhuru Jazz Series and its powerful meaning. Rainey's art centers on marginalized voices within the Black community to provide a fuller, more nuanced view of the whole community and empower individuals by giving them autonomy over how their stories are told thus providing alternative potentialities for Black Liberation.

Hailing from Simi Valley, California, Gould, who started singing at age four, moved to New York City in 2015. Her earthy vocals combine Billie Holiday's tender timbre, Sarah Vaughan's fluidity, Carmen McRae's angular edge and Ella Fitzgerald's clarity. Gould's multi-dimensional voice is augmented by her Joni Mitchell-like, jazz-adjacent chamber/folk compositional settings, supported by her intimate bass, guitar, cello and violin quartet.

Speaking about the stories behind her compositions on the website, Jazzspeaks.org, "Some of them are true and some of them are not," Gould claims. "Some relate to my life and some of them don't. I love leaving it up to the audience to guess. Some of the stories I come up with are better suited to a 150-page screenplay, which I have delved into. I just love creating a different universe where you have complete control over the ending of the story."

Described by the Bay Area Registry as "a transformative and evolving young voice in the NYC and national jazz scene...," Gould has performed in many of New York's premier venues including Jazz at Lincoln Center, Smalls, and The Jazz Gallery.

Gould has worked with the J.C. Hopkins Biggish Band and Emmet Cohen, among others. In 2021, she released In Her Words, a collaboration recording with vocalist Lucy Yeghiazaryan, featuring standards and original compositions that explore and give voice to the interior lives of women. In its review of the CD, Down Beat magazine wrote, "... Yeghiazaryan crafts melodies with an exquisitely tempered, full-bodied voice tailor-made for illuminating the great torch songs of a bygone era, while Southern California native Vanisha Gould spins colorful narration from her songs with a conversational style seared with sauciness."

When Gould returns to the AWAACC, she'll perform from her setlist, which ranges from "Gypsy Feet," her original composition about a woman whose feet are calloused from walking town to town breaking men's hearts, to her riveting rendition of Holiday's classic ballad, "My Man." All selections considered, Gould's eclectic vision of the jazz continuum is well worth the price of admission.

Tickets are $25.00 and are available at www.awaacc.org.

The August Wilson African American Cultural Center is a non-profit cultural organization located in Pittsburgh's cultural district that generates artistic, educational, and community initiatives that advance the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson. One of the largest cultural centers in the country focused exclusively on the African American experience and the celebration of Black culture and the African diaspora, the non-profit organization welcomes more than 119,000 visitors locally and nationally. Through year-round programming across multiple genres, such as the annual Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival, Black Bottom Film Festival, AWCommunity Days, TRUTHSayers speaker series, and rotating art exhibits in its galleries, the Center provides a platform for established and emerging artists of color whose work reflects the universal issues of identity that Wilson tackled, and which still resonate today. www.awaacc.org