Cesária Évora at the 2007 JVC Jazz Festival

New York (NY), USA – Cape Verdian legend Cesária Évora will perform at the 2007 JVC Jazz Festival – New York in June 2007. The festival takes place June 17 – 30. Produced by George Wein & The Festival Network, LLC, the annual celebration of jazz and eclectic music features more than 200 events at 28 venues.

Nicknamed the "barefoot diva" for her habit of performing without shoes, Cesária Évora performs at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, June 26, at 8:00 p.m. The Cape Verdean vocalist is perhaps the best-known practitioner of morna, songs of sadness, sorrow and yearning.

She began singing morna at age 16 and soon began performing all over the islands. She never left homeland and in the mid-70s, she gave up singing. In 1985, at the age of 45, she returned to music and recorded two songs for an anthology of female Cape Verdean singers. This led to recording sessions in Paris, which resulted in four albums from 1988 to 1992. Her international fame grew, and she toured Europe, Africa, Brazil, and Canada, with stops in the United States.

Ten years later, she launched her first large-scale American tour, followed by the recording Cabo Verde in 1997 and Mar Azul and Café Atlantico in 1999. She went on to win the 2004 Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music recording for Voz D’Amor; and her 2006 release, Rogamar, is quickly becoming a favorite of old and new fans alike.

On the bill with Cesária Évora are the bird and the bee, Inara George and Greg Kurstin. Multi-instrumentalist Greg was a jazz piano prodigy who later moved to New York specifically to study with Jaki Byard, Charles Mingus’ pianist. He returned to Los Angeles and became one of the city’s most well respected musicians, lending his skills to Beck and Robert Moog, as well as writing with other musicians.

Inara grew up in Los Angeles in a musical household, the daughter of Lowell George, front man of Little Feat. For several years she was in different bands in the Los Angeles area until she began her solo career and released 2005’s critically acclaimed All Rise. During the production of her CD, she met Greg; and over the course of three years, they sequestered themselves in a world of their own, where they created the 10 "sunshine-drenched, semi-psychedelic ditties" (their description, not ours) that became their debut self-titled CD, The Bird & The Bee.

Tickets for Cesaria Evora/the bird and the bee are $85, $65, $50, $35. Tickets can be purchased at the Carnegie Hall Box Office at 881 Seventh Avenue, at www.carnegiehall.org or by telephone at (212) 247-7800. For more information and a Festival brochure, call (646) 862-0458 weekdays from 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. or write JVC Jazz Festival – New York, P.O. Box 1169, Ansonia Station, New York, NY 10023. For more information, visit the official JVC Jazz Festival – New York website at www.festivalproductions.net.