The Blues Alley Jazz Society is pleased to announce the launch of the 6th annual Ella Fitzgerald Competition on Tuesday, November 1st. This year’s theme will be “Ella Sings Ellington” and we invite our contestants to select three (3) songs from the eponymous 1957 recording. Our celebrity judge will be award-winning vocalist Jane Monheit who will be both adjudicator and a performer throughout the Ella Fitzgerald Week between April 17-23, 2023.

The competition was conceived and launched to coincide with the centennial of “America’s “First Lady of Song”. The focus of our competition revolves around the American Songbook and the songbook revolves around the Verve catalogue of composers. Composers include the recordings of “Ella and Louie, Ella and Basie, Johnny Mercer, and the Antonio Carlos Jobim songbooks.

Winners are selected from a field of international vocal submissions and narrowed down to five finalists with three song selections from each contestant. The five finalists are then asked to submit both an audio and a video audition which is then narrowed down to one winner, one runner-up, and three third-place winners. 

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The Blues Alley Jazz Society is pleased to announce the winner of the 6th annual Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Vocal Competition - April Varner (New York). 2nd Place Winner is Katie Oberholtzer (Maine), and 3rd Place Winners are Emily Davies (Virginia), Nathan Farrell (New York), and Deco McDuffie (Florida).