The Queens: Ella Fitzgerald (Jazz), Dinah Washington (Blues), Anita O’Day (Swing)

This event will mark the kick off of a few upcoming exciting Album tour dates over to the East Coast and another Festival Cruise, this time to the South Pacific.

Ella, Dinah, Anita: Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Anita O’Day is more than just a standard tribute album. This homage is an uplifting spectacle of a classics presented in an intelligent bright, fresh and diverse style. The epic 15-track album pays tribute to three pioneering vocalists of the early to mid 20th Century, three inspirational Musical Giants that made their mark and blazed the train for those that followed.

Summers’ has drawn from these icons of jazz in her career and shows how comfortable she is with presenting respectful twists on old favourites. She honours these songs by singing them in a way synonymous to how they were first performed, reminding listeners why they fell in love with this music in the first place. It doesn’t hurt that the musicians accompanying her are some of the finest in Australia’s West Coast Jazz Scene.

Songs on the album – Angel Eyes, A-Tisket A-Tasket, Cheek To Cheek, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered, Our Love Is Here, What A Difference A Day Makes, Mad About The Boy, Lover Man, What Is This Thing Called Love, You’re The Top, Let’s Face The Music & Dance, But Not For Me, Taking A Chance On Love, Love For Sale, I Get A Kick Out of You and All of Me.

These icons of jazz lived and suffered through the all too familiar dark back stories of tragic, traumatic and tormented early years and Summers taps into her own agonising experiences to deliver beauty in sadness, cheekiness in lively, and raw emotion in blues. The evening promises to delight and be one to remember with tid-bits of rich musical history from a golden era coupled with Cathrine warmth, depth and passion for jazz that is rarely experienced.

“With incredible vocal range, tender sense of comedy and comforting warm stage presence, it is as if the audience has known her for years. Cole Porter, once said, ‘I wanted every kind of love that was available, but I could never find them in the same person.’ Yet in the beautiful and talented Cotton Club singer, all these forms of love seem to coalesce.” Perri Watson