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Gabrielle Cavassa

Gabrielle Cavassa is a California-born vocalist-composer of Italian descent, based in New Orleans. Her distinctive voice and intimate expression have garnered widespread recognition, including being crowned a winner of the 2021 International Sarah Vaughan Jazz Vocal Competition, an album collaboration with renowned saxophonist Joshua Redman on the 2023 project ‘where are we’, and most recently, signing a record deal with Blue Note Records.

Cavassa’s early love for music started when she began collecting and “obsessively listening” to records at a young age. Largely self-taught, she developed a unique approach to singing that would characterize her artistry. Cavassa received a Bachelor of Arts in Music from San Francisco State University, but says that her “real education” came from playing San Francisco jazz clubs throughout her college years. In 2017, Cavassa moved to New Orleans where she recorded her eponymous debut record with producer Jamison Ross, independently released in 2020. In 2021 she won the prestigious International Sarah Vaughan Jazz Vocal Competition. She was ushered into the spotlight through her collaboration with renowned saxophonist Joshua Redman on his critically acclaimed 2023 record ‘where are we’. In a five-star Downbeat review of 'where of we', Cavassa is hailed as “a young singer with a deep, rich, and fragile voice…a star in the making.” From Fall 2023 to Spring 2025, Cavassa toured extensively with the Joshua Redman Group, a collection of several of today’s most exciting young musicians.

Cavassa’s Blue Note debut is set to release in Spring 2026.

Awards

2021 Winner of The International Sarah Vaughan Jazz Vocal Competition
2018 Finalist of The International Sarah Vaughan Jazz Vocal Competition

Joshua Redman: Words Fall Short

Read "Words Fall Short" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
July 6, 2025

After extended tenures on Warner Brothers and Nonesuch Records, saxophonist/composer/bandleader Joshua Redman debuted on the Blue Note jazz label in 2023 with Where We Are. And while its successor, Words Fall Short, is right in line with that record by featuring vocals, it initiates a new phase in the leader's career by showcasing his new quartet in its recorded debut. Formed as prelude to the world tour designed to support the previous effort, pianist Paul Cornish, bassist Philip ...

Album Review

Bria Skonberg: What It Means

Read "What It Means" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
September 24, 2024

On her first album in five years, trumpeter Bria Skonberg returns with a new sense of maturity and purpose in her music. She continues her usual style of mixing traditional jazz and soulful vocals with classic jazz and rock motifs, but this outing feels more confident than previous albums. Two changes in her life probably contributed to this. She moved to New Orleans, becoming part of that city's vast music scene, and she became a parent for the first time. ...

Album Review

Joshua Redman: Where Are We

Read "Where Are We" reviewed by Dave Linn

by Dave Linn
September 24, 2023

After graduating from Berkeley High School in 1986, Joshua Redman (son of jazz legend Dewey Redman) won a full scholarship to Harvard, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1991. He was accepted at Yale Law School to become a lawyer. Instead, he embarked on a musical career which quickly turned luminous. He won the Thelonious Monk Institute's prestigious jazz saxophone competition in 1991, before moving to Brooklyn, becoming part of the thriving scene there. His debut album, Joshua Redman ...

Rising Stars

Meet Vocalist Gabrielle Cavassa

by Sanford Josephson
July 5, 2021

For the first time in its nine-year history, the Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Competition named two winners of its annual contest: 26-year-old Gabrielle Cavassa of New Orleans and 25-year-old Tawanda Seussbrich-Joaquim of Los Angeles. The finals for the 2020 competition, originally scheduled for November 2020, were postponed by the pandemic and held on June 6, 2021, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. At April's socially-distanced Exit Zero Jazz Festival in Cape May, NJ, Gabrielle Cavassa ignited the ...

Her voice gets under your skin. It is idiosyncratic, but it is trustworthy in its clarity and almost physical in its intimacy..her intuitive interpretations and riveting voice make you sit very still in your chair.—Thomas Conrad , Stereophile

Gabrielle Cavassa, a young singer with a deep, rich, fragile voice. Cavassa is a star in the making. — Frank Alkyer , Downbeat

" She just draws you in,” said Redman of his new bandmate. “It’s kind of an intimacy and a vulnerability that she has, in her expression, in her sound, that is captivating and unique.” Redman’s interactive chemistry with Cavassa evokes another, historic saxophone-vocal pairing, that of Lester Young and Billie Holiday. —Gary Fukushima , Downbeat

Gabrielle Cavassa, a young singer with a deep, rich, fragile voice. Cavassa is a star in the making. — Frank Alkyer , Downbeat

Redman and Cavassa complement each other congenially and make the air in the studio shimmer. Literally. Again and again they find themselves in a two-part harmony that creates overtone vibrations as if they were a chamber music ensemble. —Andrian Kreye, German Press

Then Cavassa starts singing in her exquisitely singular voice, stretching out words and toggling tones with jaw-dropping power. – Dylan Itkin, WXPN

There is something both traditional and progressive about Cavassa’s singing..I heard in Cavassa’s voice Blossom Dearie and Norah Jones — perhaps with hints of Billie Holiday. But she has an unconventional relationship to words, often abandoning diction to create instrument-like expression with her voice. At several points she matched Redman’s saxophone sound so closely it was hard to tell them apart. Sometimes you didn’t understand the words, but you always got their meaning…….Cavassa again sang with a soulfulness that was beyond her years. —-Kevin McLaughlin, Cleaveland Classical

Gabrielle Cavassa, a singer who is rapidly making a name for herself for exquisite phrasing and rich tone. — tom spurge, jazzwise

One of the brightest new discoveries in vocal jazz. ..it’s Cavassa who injects warmth and vulnerability — Jazz trail

[Cavassa is] a producers dream. She has a truly original approach to the music which is quite refreshing and much needed. —Gary Walker, WBGO

An extraordinary interpreter of song.. she surely had the audience hanging on to her every word —Raul da Gama, Toronto Music Report

unpredictable and deeply intimate performance —Offbeat

A very distinctive voice —WBGO

Cavassa wielded her light, supple voice like a paintbrush as she colorfully played with time, lyrics, phrasing and melody. —Michael Barris, Downbeat

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