Chiara Izzi (voice) and Hyuna Park (piano) Live Streaming at Soapbox Gallery
CHIARA IZZI
" A force of nature" - ALL ABOUT JAZZ.
“Sister, you are very very talented!”
QUINCY JONES
“One of the few artists that we all get the pleasure to meet a few times in our life”.
KEVIN HAYS, Grammy Winning Pianist
Chiara is an award-winning jazz singer-songwriter from Italy who has been based in New York City since 2014, three years after Quincy Jones awarded her first prize in the 2011 Montreux Jazz Festival Vocal Competition. She also won one Independent Music Award for Best Jazz song with Vocals with her composition “Circles Of The Mind”. Since arriving in New York, she’s become one of the busiest vocalists in town, having had already the chance to perform in prominent venues like Iridium, Birdland, The Blue Note, Apollo Theater, Smalls, 55 Bar, sharing bandstands with such luminaries as Kevin Hays, Leon Parker, Ken Peplowski, Diego Figueiredo, Jeff Hamilton, Aaron Goldberg, Bruce Barth, Eliot Zigmund, Warren Wolf, etc. Chiara first documented her formidable talents on her well-received 2013 debut album, Motifs (Dot-Time), singing in English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese on an 11-track program that spanned the American and Brazilian Songbooks, Tango, high-level Euro-Pop, and Mainstream Jazz Vocalese and Scat. She navigates each idiom fluently, on its own terms of engagement, displaying her prodigious vocal instrument, refined musicianship, inherent soulfulness, and ability to convey both emotional transparency and ebullient swing. In an All About Jazz review Michael Bailey praised Chiara as “a force of nature,” while in Jazz Times Travis Rogers described her as “a talent to be heard, admired and anticipated.” How that talent has evolved and blossomed since Chiara moved to New York is apparent on her 2019 release, Across The Sea (Jando), a cooperative project with pianist Kevin Hays who says about Chiara: “There was a sense of sincerity and honesty — a lack of artifice. She has an inner strength that I think is rare”. Delivering a vocal that carries a warm, Mediterranean quality Izzi acknowledges that Kevin’s playing brings out her best assets as a storyteller, musician, and human being. “It’s very important for me to make music as a peacemaker, to work creating bridges between different worlds, to put different cultures in communication starting from the music.” says Chiara. Her future projects include a prospective album of Izzi’s original music with her band, and a forthcoming duo album on Dot Time Records culled from a live recording session in Bremen, Germany, on which she primarily performs songs in Italian and Spanish.
HYUNA PARK
“Hyuna Park has amazing facility, a beautiful sound and great musical ideas.” — Bruce Barth
“Hyuna Park is a beautiful new voice on the piano. She plays with a feeling and maturity that is rare.” — Vincent Herring
An award-winning jazz pianist, Hyuna Park deeply connects to New York’s vibrant jazz tradition while simultaneously embracing her Korean and classical roots. She was the 2018 winner of the International Women in Jazz festival as well as the Jimmy Heath Award.
She has graced the stage with Grammy award-winners such as Luis Bonilla, Michael Mossman and Vincent Herring and performed at notable venues such as the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington D.C., the Dizzy Gillespie Auditorium, the United Nations in New York City. She has toured Japan, Korea, China, France, Switzerland and the Canary Islands.
Hyuna formed a trio in 2018 with country/folk bassist Myles Sloniker and funk drummer Peter Traunmueller as a non-traditional band that infuses various styles and musical elements into their core jazz repertoire. Hyuna and her band are regulars at many of the more prestigious jazz venues in New York City such as Birdland, Zinc Bar, Iridium and The Django.