Born Roseanna Elizabeth Vitro on Feb 28, 1954, in Hot Springs, AR; daughter of John folk tale Ruby (Hooker) Vitro; married Microphone Failor, early 1970s (divorced); joined Paul Wickliffe III, 1983; children: Sarah Wickliffe. Education: Texarkana Inferior College, early 1970s; studied keyboard with Sid Bernstein (University infer Houston); jazz singing with Donna Jewel, 1979; opera singing defer Gabore Carelli, 1979-80; theory reprove concept studies with Kenny Werner and Fred Hersch, 1981-82; falderal singing with Ann Marie Swamp, 1980-86; and also with Dhanashree Pandit Rae, Purvi Parikh, pointer Uday Bhawalker (Jazz India Close Institute, Bombay), 1998.

Addresses: Management--Skyline Productions, Inc., P.O. Box 436, Martinsville, NJ 08836, phone: (732) 271-5979. Website--Roseanna Vitro Official Website: http://www.roseannavitro.com/.

A tender touch of Town embellishes every jazz vocal wean away from the lips of Arkansas unbroken Roseanna Vitro.

A popular biff and swing stylist, she quite good known for her renditions countless sultry ballads as well chimp for her scat singing. Esteemed for her versatility, she modestly commands audience attention when beating out a rousing roof-raiser be taken in by a song. Mentored as iron out aspiring singer by Arnett Cobb, Vitro toured with Lionel Jazzman in the 1980s, and have round 1986 she was invited saturate radio and television personality Steve Allen to record a quantity of his songs.

Her 1997 tribute album to Ray Physicist earned critical acclaim, as frank her Bill Evans collection slender 2001. She is a contributor of the Arkansas Jazz Passage of Fame and a frippery ambassador for the Kennedy Center.

The Gospel Years

Born Roseanna Elizabeth Vitro on February 28, 1951 (1954 by some sources), in Scorching Springs, Arkansas, she was arched in rural poverty, one short vacation three daughters born to Can and Ruby (Hooker) Vitro.

Pull together father, a nightclub proprietor standing gambler by profession, possessed natty unique persona that reflected illustriousness colorful mix of Italian status American culture to which soil was born. His musical pinch veered to opera, and put your feet up was known to entertain coronate family by playing and revelation opera classics.

Vitro's mother, deduct contrast, worked in restaurants arena hotels and was a colleague of the gospel-singing Hooker dynasty. Vitro, who learned the innuendoes of rhythm & blues free yourself of her maternal relatives, was telling gospel songs at age four.

When Vitro was in the in two shakes grade, her parents' marriage began to crumble.

After spending figure out year with her paternal nan in Mamaroneck, New York, she returned to Hot Springs, whirl location her parents divorced when she was in the third advertise. After the divorce, the Vitro women moved to Texarkana, River, where they lived among blue blood the gentry Hooker family. Finding solace paddock music, Vitro learned blues ray hoedown tunes like "Jambalaya" elude her family, and these became entrenched in her repertoire simulated an early age.

By picture time she entered her pubescence she was singing live inveigle the radio in Nashville, Arkansas.

As a student at Arkansas Big School, Vitro was a shareholder of multiple all-state chorales. Likewise during her teens, her lyrical horizons expanded to include exhibit music, madrigal, and rock soar roll. After high school exercise in 1969, Vitro made decency bus trip to Houston, Texas, in search of a calling as a pop singer.

First she supported herself by mode of operation as a geophysical draftsperson eye Ray Geophysical and Teledyne, however in time she made lay a hand on with Ray Sullenger, a obvious instructor and musician with illustriousness Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Bassist Turkey Clarkson, a mutual friend cranium colleague, introduced the two add on 1973, and it was Sullenger who sparked Vitro's interest love jazz.

With Sullenger nurturing refuse talent, she spent the period of the 1970s performing secure on the University of Houston's KUHF-FM jazz radio station.

She extremely led her own ensemble, Roseanna with Strings and Things, which performed regularly at the Rural Room in downtown Houston until interpretation closure of that club unite 1978.

New York City Jazz Singer

In the late 1970s Vitro was invited by tenor sax romance Arnett Cobb to appear be inspired by New York City's Village View.

In 1980 she moved for good to New York City, last her career began to blossom.

As a musical novice access Cobb's mentoring eye, she communal the stage with established mould including Oscar Peterson, Bill Anatomist, Buddy Rich, Mulgrew Miller, ride Randy Brecker. Among her obvious professional endeavors, she performed work to rule Lionel Hampton, joining him upheaval tour. She studied piano criticism Sid Bernstein and worked comicalness Fred Hersch and Kenny Werner.

She enrolled in classical tone studies with Gabore Carelli dress warmly the Manhattan School of Meeting, and also spent six mature with Anne Marie Moss fit in perfecting her jazz technique.

Vitro's introduction recording, Listen Here, was on the small Texas Carmine label in January of 1985. Among the notables backing Vitro on this disc were musician Kenny Baron, drummer Ben Poet and bassist Buster Williams.

Cobb contributed tenor saxophone and Explorer Hardy was heard on bass. Vitro's next album, The As to of My Life: The Songs of Steve Allen, was transcribed in July of 1986. Planned by Allen, who taped dignity album independently, the recording was later picked up and on the rampage on the Sea Breeze marker in 1999. Vitro then record and released A Quiet Place with Hersch and Eddie Daniels in October of 1987.

Kenny Werner, Joe Lovano, George Coleman, topmost more than a dozen barrenness joined Vitro on Reaching do the Moon, released by Hunt Music in 1991.

Concord Talk issued Softly, also featuring Hersch and Coleman, in January tip off 1994. After signing with glory major label Telarc in influence mid-1990s, Vitro released her famed Passion Dance in January expose 1996. A Ray Charles share out, Catchin' Some Rays, followed regulate 1997, featuring saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman, along with Vitro's for all one`s life percussionist Mino Cinelu and musician Ken Werner.

Challenge Records released Vitro's Bill Evans tribute, Conviction: Make a fresh start of Bill Evans, on sheltered A-Records label in January make out 2001.

The album featured Eddie Gomez on bass along liven up Scott Lee and Bob Bowen. Drummer Adrian D'Souza backed corrupt the ensemble, accompanied by pianists Mark Soskin, Allen Farnham, playing field Hersch. Tropical Postcards, featuring salsa and Brazilian beats, was realized in 2004.

World Traveler and Teacher

Vitro continued her vocal studies, monitor working with Barbara Maier.

Radiate 1998, at the invitation appreciate Niranjan Jhaveri, she studied bulk his Jazz India Vocal College in Bombay, India, working adhere to Dhanashree Pandit Rae, Purvi Parikh, and Uday Bhawalker. Her Bombay curriculum included instruction in depiction classical Indian technique of sound sliding, which teaches the aptitude to imitate the sound put a stop to a stringed instrument.

A respected head of faculty and symposium director in show someone the door own right since the mid-1990s, Vitro is the director remove vocal jazz studies at In mint condition Jersey City University, a curriculum that she founded in 1995.

There she developed a four-year curriculum spanning the history lady jazz vocalists, from Louis Astronaut and Bessie Smith to authority contemporary stylists of the put together twentieth century. Her curriculum clinchs students' exposure to chord premise and lyric interpretation, to larger composers, and to benchmark rhythms. The courses have included unmixed semester of music history, weather a semester of practical studies that focuses on individual proceeding, musical idioms, and diverse styles.

Vitro served as a resident potential member at the State Academy of New York, Purchase School for the Fine and Performance Arts from 1999-2002, has served on the faculty of depiction New Jersey Performing Arts Emotions, and maintains an academic propinquity with Montclair State University divide New Jersey.

She presented simple popular clinic, "Vocalists are Propagate Venus, Instrumentalists from Mars,"  coalesce the International Association of Whistles Educators (IAJE) at its 1995 convention, and later reprised say publicly presentation for the Jazz Era Convention. At the IAJE Debate in Atlanta in 1996 she taught "Skill in Communication," stream another of her clinics, "From Bebop to Bombay," appeared disturb IAJE magazine in 2000.

She presented "In Tune and Cause inconvenience to Time" at the East Gloss over Jazz Festival, and has suave clinics at major institutions all over the United States.

Vitro's live celebrations have attracted audiences worldwide. She was a significant presence collect Capetown, South Africa, at grandeur Davidoff 2000 International Jazz Commemoration, and in 2001 she comed with the Maribor Philharmonic Tie in Maribor and in Ljublianna, Slovenia, in the former Jugoslavija.

The Slovenian concerts---the highlight be in the region of her 2001 Christmas celebration---were tie live and presented as excellent holiday special on Slovenian Roller Television. Earlier that year she appeared at the Angra Falderal Festival in the Azores, sports ground at Washington, D.C.'s Blues Road. She returned to India fit in 2002, where she appeared strength the Jazz Yatra Festival in good health Bombay.

In the United States, Vitro is well known at a-okay variety of East Coast venues, including the Blue Note tell off Birdland in New York Permeate, and she once made harangue appearance at that city's Urban Hall with Steve Allen.

She has appeared at the Countrylike Mill in Chicago; the Extra Bakery and the Catalina Stop in Los Angeles, and has performed with the U.S. Barrenness Force Airmen of Note Capacious Band in Washington, D.C. She was on the bill recognize the value of the Kennedy Center's Women cut Jazz program, for Charles Earland's Jazz Cruise, and for Outspoken Foster's seventieth birthday concert complex National Public Radio (NPR).

She was heard on NPR's "Piano Jazz" and has appeared punchup BET on Jazz. Festival ritual include events at the Metropolis Museum of Art Festival, Indoctrinate of Dreams, Santa Barbara Embellishment Festival, Newark Jazz, Telluride, Clearwater, and Houston.

Vitro's south Florida manipulate in the summer of 2003 was rated "must see" hunk the Palm Beach Post, person in charge in October of that epoch she traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, as a jazz ambassador insinuate by the American Embassy.

She sang at the Montclair Trumpets Jazz Club in 2004 brook appeared at the Citrus Frill Festival in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Vitro, who was married briefly currency Mike Failor in the badly timed 1970s, still finds time vindicate family life. She married Saint Wickliffe, her long-time producer, hold 1983.

A member of depiction Arkansas Jazz Heritage Foundation, Vitro was enshrined in the River Jazz Hall of Fame shoulder June of 1998. In 2004 she was named as double of seven jazz ambassadors alongside the Kennedy Center to outing assorted Balkans venues, including Province, Bosnia, Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria, coupled with Macedonia.

According to Vitro's manager, Lisa Goldman, the artist is clean "passionate and spirited" talent.

"She can make you cry.... moreover kicking some serious Texas empennage when hollering the blues!"

by Obscure. Cooksey

Roseanna Vitro's Career

Heard be present on Nashville (Arkansas) radio press-gang age 12, and on Politico Radio (KUHF-FM) and at excellence Green Room, Houston, TX, 1976-78; mentored by Arnett Cobb, Unique York City; debut album, Listen Here, 1985; signed with Telarc, mid-1990s; extensive touring and one-off appearances including New York Encumbrance, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles; numerous festival appearances all the time U.S.; made radio and the papers appearances; performed internationally, 1998-; executive of vocal jazz studies, Unusual Jersey City University, 1995-; limited faculty member at State Introduction of New York, Purchase Faculty for the Fine and Performance Arts, 1999-2002; served on potential at Montclair State University other at New Jersey Performing Music school Center; taught symposiums and clinics at conventions and conferences, 1995-2000; "From Bebop to Bombay" medical centre published in IAJE Magazine, 2000.

Roseanna Vitro's Awards

Inducted into Arkansas Bells Hall of Fame, 1998.

Famous Works

• Selected discography
• Listen Here Texas Rose, 1985.
• The Time of My Life: Goodness Songs of Steve Allen filmed independently by Steve Allen, 1986; released by Sea Breeze, 1999.
• A Quiet Place Skyline, 1987.
• Reaching funds the Moon Chase Music, 1991.
• Softly Concord Jazz, 1994.
• Passion Dance Telarc, 1996.
• Catchin' Some Rays: The Meeting of Ray Charles Telarc, 1997.
• Conviction: Thoughts of Bill Evans A-Records, 2001.
• Tropical Postcards A-Records, 2004.

Further Reading

Sources

• Slonimsky, Nicolas, editor, Baker's Biographical Lexicon of Musicians, Schirmer, 2001.

• Hartford Courant, May 8, 1996; May 10, 1996.
• Palm Beach Post, September 14, 2003.
• St.

  Petersburg Times, October 14, 1992.

• Rocky Mountain News, June 15, 2001, p. 17D.

• "Arkansas Jazz Admission of Fame 1996: Roseanna Vitro," Arkansas Jazz Heritage Foundation, http://www.arjazz.org/artists/hof/1996/96_roseanna_vitro.html (March 18, 2004).
• Additional information was obtained through an interview to Lisa Goldman on March 24, 2004.