Jazz vocalist Iva Jean Ambush, “the scat lady,” is the recent winner of the coveted Billie Holiday Competition.
She has performed at Birdland (NYC), the DC Jazz Festival, Keystone Korner in Baltimore, Blues Alley, the East Coast Jazz Festival, the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, among many other stages. She explores jazz phrasing and rhythm with the help of jazz legends Sheila Jordan, Dr. Horace Boyer, and Ronnie Wells.
Jazz runs in the family. Her relatives include the late trumpeter Lester Bowie, Defunkt founder Joe Bowie, bassist Scott Ambush of Spyro Gyra, and pianist Allen Ambush.
She is working on her next CD, I Am(bush) Jazz, a homage to her family with a jazz fusion of gospel, funk, and soul. Through music written by the pioneers, Ambush shows why the voice remains the epitome of communication through syncopation: elevating the instrument, the language, the conversation.