DATELINE WASHINGTON, DC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Blues Alley Jazz, and our non-profit Blues Alley Jazz Society, are proud to announce the winner of our 9th annual Ella Fitzgerald international vocal competition. This year’s winner is Ms. Ava Preston from Cleveland, Ohio. Ms. Preston was one of five finalists who were winnowed from a pool of global entries. Ms. Preston is a 21-year old rising jazz vocalist with expansive experience in all genres of jazz music. She is a 12-time DownBeat magazine “Student Music Award” winner, has performed at a variety of prestigious venues, and is currently pursuing her Masters Degree in jazz voice at The Juilliard School in Manhattan.

 

This year’s two celebrity judges were Nnenna Freelon and Sachal Vasandani. The former is a native of Massachusetts and is currently a resident of North Carolina. She is best known as a singer, composer, producer, arranger, and educator. The latter is a native Chicagoan and now resides in Miami, Florida. Mr. Vasandani has been similarly described as a singer, songwriter, composer, and educator. Together they were tasked to bring order to chaos and talent to our winning finalists.

 

Our other winning finalists are as follows:

    2nd Place: Kyra Cioffi of Rutherford, New Jersey

    3rd Place:

            Gabriela Allemana of Chicago, Illinois

            Lily Alter of Oak Park, Illinois

            Emily Davies of Buffalo, New York

 

This year’s theme was “Ella Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook” with each annual songbook selections chosen from the Verve and Pablo recording catalogues. Blues Alley Jazz will be inviting all five finalists to perform in April of 2027. This invitation will help codify our education, and performance programming, as we cultivate, mentor, and present the next generation of vocal jazzers. While we have not yet identified the next competition’s songbook selections we invite potential educators and performers to participate. We will open our upcoming competition on November 1st with additional details to follow. Please visit and/or donate, to our non-profit music education programming, at either www.BluesAlley.org or www.EllaFitzgeraldCompetition.org. As Ella says, “The only thing better than singing is more singing”.

 

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