This evening will honor the work of icon Billie Holiday on Dr. Martin Luther King weekend.

Billie Holiday (1915-1959) is remembered for her songwriting skills, creativity, and courageous views on inequality and justice. Her voice was deeply moving and easily identifiable, despite her never having formal musical training. Rather, she learned by singing alongside Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong in her teens. In 1933 Holiday made her first recordings with Benny Goodman. She wrote “God Bless the Child” along with Arthur Herzog Jr., which is now in the Great American Songbook. Thankfully, there are many recordings of Holiday’s singing and many songs she wrote. She toured Europe, starred in the Hollywood film, “New Orleans” with Louis Armstrong, and signed to Columbia Records before her death. Holiday carved out space that was previously unseen in vocal Jazz, especially for women. She captured the attention of many and changed the course of Jazz for the better. Her courageous expression is an ongoing gift to Jazz and beyond.

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Danette Hollowell is a singer, songwriter, and classically trained dancer in Denver, CO. After a chance encounter with an opportunity to take part in a jazz scholarship at UCD, her professional career began to blossom. Hollowell has brought an edge, dynamism, and beautiful charisma to the Denver music scene, and it’s her solo vocals and creative stamina that has carried her through the years and changes in the music industry. Hollowell says, “Performance art is my passion and I am grateful to have many ways I can express myself through my passion be it theatre, dance, or vocal Jazz.” Hollowell went through phases of questioning her “belonging” in the professional music scene but found solace in learning about icons like Billie Holiday which prompted her to own her passion for music. “I began to see myself in the stories and my own experiences in those icons and greats and decided that I belonged here, hardships and all. There is real beauty in challenges, to me, all that I was experiencing was TRUE art.”

Vocalist: Danette Hollowell
Piano: Luke Maxon
Bass: Max Hass
Trumpet: Joshua Trinidad
Drums: Alex Armstrong

Join Gift of Jazz for their first show at Mississippi Boy Catfish & Ribs! “Birthplace of America’s Music and Great Food.”