Monica Hatch

Having studied voice with one of America's great sopranos, Eleanor Steber, song stylist Monica Hatch is one of the very few who managed to have a successful career as both a classical and jazz singer. Growing up in a family of eight children, like many singers, Hatch's initial experience as a performer came as a member of her church choir at the age of 12. But even at eight she was already listening to her fiddler father's Meade Lux Lewis, Oscar Peterson, and Dave Brubeck's records and knew that she was destined for a musical career. A coloratura soprano with impeccable phrasing, clear, crystalline tone, and absolute pitch, Hatch has performed Duke Ellington's Scared Concerts (in a role that Alice Babs was noted for), performed vocal music by Schuman and Vivaldi, while working as a jazz singer. Although she had jazz gigs in the 1980s, she started pursuing jazz seriously in 1993 when she was getting club dates in Worcester, MA. She has made a mark in the jazz arena, releasing two albums, receiving a DownBeat Magazine award for jazz vocals and appearing at jazz festivals sponsored by the Boston Globe. With her classical background, Hatch not only brings a technically advanced set of vocal chords to her jazz work, but an appreciation of the lyrics of the material she sings. She conveys a sense of warmth in her interpretations never letting her naturally strong voice overwhelm the material. When not working at such jazz watering holes as Bullfinch's and Scullers and singing with the St John's Schola choir, Hatch likes to listen to Shirley Horn, Joni Mitchell, Ella Fitzgerald, and especially the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim. ~ Dave Nathan, All Music Guide