Madeleine Peyroux is a US jazz singer and songwriter from Athens, Georgia, born in 1974. She is raised in New York City and Paris, and her work sits within contemporary jazz, folk, jazz and vocal jazz.

Background

Peyroux starts singing at the age of fifteen after discovering street musicians in Paris’s Latin Quarter. She first sings with a group called the Riverboat Shufflers, initially collecting money before performing. At sixteen, she joins The Lost and Wandering Blues and Jazz Band and spends two years touring Europe, performing songs associated with Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and others. This period provides the basis for her first album, Dreamland.

Recording career

Dreamland is released in 1996 and draws widespread attention. The recording features sparse accompaniment that leaves space for Peyroux’s distinctive voice and phrasing. She becomes known for a vocal style often compared with Billie Holiday, while also showing affinities with Ella Fitzgerald, though her interpretation remains individual.

After Dreamland, Peyroux opens for Sarah McLachlan and Cesária Évora and appears at jazz festivals and on the Lilith Fair tour. In May 2002 she works with multi-instrumentalist William Galison, performing at venues including the Bottom Line, Joe’s Pub and the Tin Angel. In 2003 the pair release the seven-song EP Got You on My Mind, sold at shows and online. The EP is re-released in 2004 with four additional tracks.

Her second solo album, Careless Love, appears in 2004 and receives generally positive reviews. Half the Perfect World follows in 2006. On that album she works with Jesse Harris, Walter Becker and Larry Klein, who also produces the record, and records a duet with k.d. lang on a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “River”.

Awards

Peyroux receives the Best International Jazz Artist award at the BBC Jazz Awards in 2007.