Isabella Isherwood

Chicago-based jazz vocalist, pianist, and actor Isabella Isherwood makes her Buffalo debut at PAUSA art house, one night only, with a repertoire that has little interest in staying politely inside the Great American Songbook.

For Isherwood, a song isn’t a standard to preserve under glass. It’s a scene to enter, a character to uncover, an argument to have. She moves from the Songbook into deep-cut musical theatre, Tom Waits, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and Amy Winehouse, pulling each one apart just enough to find what it’s been hiding.

Critics agree: JW Vibe calls her “deeply attuned to the storytelling heart of jazz tradition.” Parcbench says her debut album, The Sweetest Sounds (Sabrina Records), “establishes Isherwood as a major interpreter of the American Songbook.” Grammy Award-winning critic Neil Tesser puts it simpler still: a voice that “cuts the fog like a quavering beacon.”

She’s performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, toured Europe three times, and headlined the Chicago Jazz Festival. Now she arrives in Buffalo with a band, a stack of very good songs, and no intention of leaving them the way she found them.