ABOUT ALYSSA

Named a “Rising Star Female Vocalist” in the 2024 Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll, vocalist and composer Alyssa Allgood stands out as a bold and compelling voice in the modern jazz landscape. Described as “assured and daring” by Downbeat and acknowledged for her “force, clarity and jazz integrity” by the New York City Jazz Record, Allgood weaves soulful storytelling and rich improvisational language through original compositions, captivating arrangements, and a lyrical focus of self-love and human connection.

Allgood’s 2024 release, From Here (Next Records) is a powerful collection of original music recorded with some of music’s most lionized artists: GRAMMY winners bassist John Patitucci and pianist Geoffrey Keezer, Blue Note recording artist drummer Kendrick Scott and Big Fish Booking artist saxophonist Greg Ward. The music showcases a modern approach to jazz singing with musical interaction and vocal freedom at its core. Allgood self-produced a national release tour for this album, performing at such esteemed venues Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club and Birdland Jazz Club in NYC, Blues Alley in DC, the Green Mill and Jazz Showcase in Chicago, Blue Llama in Ann Arbor, Parker Jazz Club in Austin, Bop Stop in Cleveland and many others. Two compositions from the album were selected as finalists in the 2023 John Lennon Songwriting Contest and the 2023 International Songwriting Competition.

Her three previous albums — What Tomorrow Brings (Cellar Music, 2021), Exactly Like You (Cellar Music, 2018), and her self-released debut Out of the Blue (2016) — trace the remarkable trajectory of a vocalist admired for the clarity of her instrument, the sureness of her phrasing, the range of her improvising, and the burgeoning depth of her interpretative skills.

Allgood first made her name in such legendary Chicago clubs as the Green Mill and the Jazz Showcase, through residences at Winter’s Jazz Club — where she has delved into the songbooks of jazz’s classic divas (Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Dinah Washington) — and at the internationally renowned Chicago Jazz Festival. Appearances followed in New York’s famed Birdland, Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai (China) and the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts (British Columbia). She was a semifinalist in the 2015 Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition, where jazz icon Al Jarreau led the jury, before winning the Inaugural Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Voice Competition (2017) and the David Baker Memorial Scholarship offered through the Jazz Education Network (2022). Closer to home, she was a 2016 Jazz Improvisation Fellow of the Luminarts Cultural Foundation in Chicago and was named Best Jazz Entertainer in the Chicago Music Awards (2019).

A passionate educator, Allgood teaches in the Jazz Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Loyola University. She uses experience on the bandstand to empower students to find their voice and learn with intention and curiosity. Allgood holds a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from DePaul University, where she served as a graduate assistant. She is a highly sought-after clinician, ensemble director and adjudicator whose teaching work has appeared at the Jazz Education Network Conference, the Illinois Music Educators Association, the Iowa Choral Directors Association, Anchor Music’s Vocal Jazz Academy, the University of Chicago and many other esteemed institutions.