BIOGRAPHY

“EXQUISITE…a buttery alto and nimble, graceful phrasing … Greg Haymes, Albany Times Union

JEANNE O'CONNOR is a vocalist who has delved deep into the heart of the Great American Songbook with swing, subtlety, and rare musicality. Her warm, expressive alto voice has also carried her into pop, Latin music, and R&B — a range that reflects both her versatility and her love of the song itself.

Jeanne has performed at New York's most storied jazz venues, including the Blue Note, Birdland, Sweet Rhythm, the Rainbow Room, and Smoke. She has sung frequently with Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, perhaps the most celebrated early-jazz big band in the country. In New York's Capital Region, she has appeared at the legendary Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, Justin's in Albany, the Upbeat on the Roof series at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, the "A Place for Jazz" concert series in Schenectady, Swingtime Jazz Society concerts, and the Saratoga Arts Festival. She performs regularly in duo with Azzaam Hameed, a keyboardist with deep roots in jazz, R&B, and gospel.

Jeanne is a member of the NYC-based Royal Bopsters, a jazz vocal quartet that has toured internationally and earned wide critical acclaim. Their most recent recording, Party of Four (featuring Holli Ross), received four stars from DownBeat, and the group was voted No. 1 vocal group in a critics' poll by Jazziz magazine. The Bopsters have performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland, and Minton's, and have toured across Europe and Istanbul. In 2022, they received New York's coveted Bistro Award for Jazz Artistry.

Jeanne was also a founding member of String of Pearls, a New York-based vocal trio that brought style, sass, and superior musicianship to vintage and modern jazz for more than two decades. The group performed at the Kennedy Center, the JVC Jazz Festival, Alice Tully Hall, and Town Hall, and toured Munich nightclubs, summer festivals in France, and venues throughout Japan. With the passing of singer Holli Ross in 2020, String of Pearls came to a close — but their music endures through their recordings.

From about 2009 to 2019, Jeanne brought together some of the finest musicians in upstate New York to form Jeanne O'Connor and the New Standard, a group reimagining great songs of the 1960s and '70s with lush vocal harmonies and irresistible grooves. Jeanne has also lent her voice to several distinguished classical choruses, including the New Amsterdam Singers and the Battenkill Chorale, and is active in studio work, backup vocals, and private engagements.

An experienced voice educator, Jeanne teaches fundamental vocal skills as well as a broad spectrum of styles: jazz, musical theater, pop, rock, and folk.

Jeanne grew up studying piano and singing in pop and folk bands before going on to study liberal arts at Brown University, where she discovered jazz and began performing in nightclubs with swing bands. She brought her career to New York in the 1980s and studied with renowned voice teachers Anne Marie Moss, Cornelius Reid, and Jane Burbank. In 1992, she married the pianist, composer, and producer Don Grolnick — a towering figure in the music world whose death from lymphoma in 1996 was felt deeply by all who knew his work. Jeanne has since remarried, to physicist David Atkatz, who taught at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. She divides her time between New York City, Saratoga, and wherever the music takes her.