Curtis Stigers, Support: The Ronnie Scotts All Stars Monday 26th July - Friday 30th July

Curtis Stigers is at the forefront of a new generation of jazz singers. With one of the most distinctive voices in music, the singer/saxophonist/songwriter pushes the boundaries of conventional jazz performers and expands the jazz repertory creating modern jazz standards. Curtis continues to blaze a path as one of his generation’s finest and most original interpreters of modern songs.

‘This is my niche, my specialty’ says Stigers.  ‘I have a great love and an eclectic knowledge of a wide array of songwriters and musical genres, and I know how to bring them all together into one cohesive sound.  I want to follow in the footsteps of my heroes.  This is what Ella and Billie Holiday did.  This is what Sinatra and Nat Cole did.  This is even what Miles and Coltrane and nearly all of the great jazz artists have done.  They’ve taken the popular songs of their generation and created something new from them.  I know a lot about Rock music and Alt Country and Urban Blues and Folk music and Punk Rock.  So I use that knowledge.  And that’s what I’m steadily becoming known for’.

Throughout his career, Curtis Stigers has been celebrated for a surprisingly wide variety of impressive accomplishments— from his early pop chart success with several self-penned, top-ten singles and hit albums and an appearance on the soundtrack for ‘The Bodyguard’ (one of the biggest selling albums of all time), to Downbeat Magazine naming him as one of the jazz genre’s ‘Rising Male Stars’ and the London Times selecting his jazz recording ‘You Inspire Me’ as jazz CD of the year in 2006.

Curtis has toured the world in concert with such renowned pop artists as Elton John, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, and Prince, and more recently has shared the bill with such jazz greats as Nancy Wilson, Randy Brecker, Toots Thielmans, George Benson, Cleo Laine and Diana Krall. In 2008 Curtis performed at the Jazz Open in Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt in a special collaboration with Thomas Quasthoff.

Curtis has performed on ‘The Tonight Show’ and ‘The Late Show’ with David Letterman’ in the United States and appears regularly on television in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe. Curtis been called ‘one of the best male jazz singers of his generation’ by JazzTimes. In 2007 Curtis was named as BBC Radio 2 ‘Jazz Artist of the Year’. In August 2009 Curtis made his debut at the BBC Proms from London’s Royal Albert Hall with John Wilson and the John Wilson Orchestra in a concert which was televised live on British television.