The Silver Spring Jazz Festival

#SSJazzFest

September 9, 3-10pm

Enter to Win VIP Seating for 4 at: https://SSJazzFest.eventbrite.com

Headlining the Silver Spring Jazz Festival this year is vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater, three-time Grammy® Award winner, Tony® Winner and recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Jazz Masters award. 

Over the course of a multifaceted career spanning four decades, Jazz giant Dee Dee Bridgewater has puts her unique spin on standards as well as re-envisioning jazz classics. Bridgewater’s career has always bridged musical genres. She earned her first professional experience as a member of the legendary Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band, and throughout the 70’s she performed with such jazz notables as Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and Dizzy Gillespie. After a foray into the pop world during the 1980s, she relocated to Paris and began to turn her attention back to Jazz.

Bridgewater began self-producing in 1993, and all her albums with the exception of one, have received Grammy® nominations. Her tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, Dear Ella, was a double Grammy® award winner.

Bridgewater also pursued a parallel career in musical theater, winning a Tony® Award for her role as “Glinda” in The Wiz in 1975. Having recently completed a run as the lead role of Billie Holiday in the off-Broadway production of Lady Day, her other theatrical credits include Sophisticated Ladies, Black Ballad, Carmen, Cabaret and the Off-Broadway and West End Productions of Lady Day, for which Bridgewater received the British Laurence Olivier Nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. She also served as the namesake host of the long-running syndicated NPR radio program JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater, produced by Becca Puliiam for WBGO.

As a Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, Bridgewater continues to appeal for international solidarity to finance global grassroots projects in the fight against world hunger. In April 2017, she was the recipient of an NEA Jazz Masters Fellows Award with honors bestowed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Dee Dee subsequently hosted the Jazz Masters Award celebration for the NEA.

Dee Dee Bridgewater also launched The Woodshed Network, a non-profit partnership with 651 Arts created to mentor, connect, support, and educate women in Jazz. Bridgewater serves as Artistic Director.