Anita Wardell
Winner of the BBC Best of Jazz category in 2006 and a British Jazz award for Best Vocalist in 2013, Anita's formative years were spent soaking up the Rodgers and Hammerstein and Cole Porter classics, and exploring her father’s collection of big band albums by Duke Ellington, Count Basie and many more. During her teens, she started to get to grips with the complexities of modern jazz and discovered Clifford Brown, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. At the same time she learned her vocal craft from greats such as Ella Fitzgerald, Mark Murphy, Carmen McRae, Betty Carter, Jon Hendricks and Eddie Jefferson.
She gained her music degree at Adelaide University, and then moved back to the UK where she studied at the Guildhall school of music and drama. Jazzwise Magazine called her “energetic and inventive” while The Guardian proclaimed her “a model of the Jazz singer’s art”, highlighting her clarity, improvisational skills and emotional resonance.