Raya Yarbrough

Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Raya Yarbrough isn’t an easy designer to categorize. Yarbrough (who takes on classical guitar and acoustic piano) is fairly capable of carrying out vocal jazz and offers recorded jazz specifications such as for example Duke Ellington’s “Feeling Indigo,” Woody Herman’s “Early Fall months” and Clifford Brown’s “Pleasure Springtime,” but her unique material is barely the work of the jazz purist or a bop snob; the Southern Californian in addition has been greatly suffering from spirit, folk, blues and rock and roll, making it very hard to pigeonhole her stylistically. Yarbrough has taken an intriguing selection of immediate or indirect affects to the desk, which range from Joni Mitchell, Roberta Flack, Joan Armatrading and Tracy Chapman to Abbey Lincoln, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Odetta. Yarbrough was created and elevated in L.A., where her dad Martin Yarbrough (a vocalist, guitarist and songwriter) inspired her curiosity about music and shown her to jazz and R&B young. After senior high school, Yarbrough went to the School of Southern California (USC) and attained a BA in the Thornton College of Music. Among her instructors at USC was acoustic pianist Shelly Berg (who offered as president from the International Association of Jazz Teachers from 1996-1998), and she also examined with acoustic bassist John Clayton (of Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra popularity) during her USC times. In 2004, Yarbrough self-released her debut record, Raya’s Disposition, and in 2006, she documented a self-titled record that @Telarc released in early 2008; that disk was made by guitarist Steve Bartek, who’s most widely known for his efforts to the brand new wave music group Oingo Boingo in the ’70s and ’80s.