The Holidays w Billie Holiday Project! Feat: Stella Heath

Stella and her quintet present the music of Billie Holiday. Shrouded in mystery as she was draped in fur, Billie was multi-faceted; she possessed a sensitivity and ability to make the songs she sang as personal as if she was singing them softly in your very own ear. Featuring some of the Bay Area’s finest Jazz musicians, Stella’s quintet brings back the electric and intimate feeling of seeing Lady Day live in a 1930’s Jazz Club. Drawing from some of Billie’s most recorded tunes such as, Blue Moon, Billie’s Blues, and Strange Fruit, to name a few, the band also revives some of the earlier and lesser known tunes she interpreted. Stories of Billie’s life and music are interspersed with the music.

The Band features, Stella Heath highlighting the vocal style of Billie Holiday; Neil Fontano classic style piano virtuoso from Sonoma County; Robby Elfman rich and inventive on tenor saxophone and clarinet harkening back to Lester Young's soulful sound; Trevor Kinsel interchanging between upright bass and cornet; and Spike Klein on the drum kit. 


Singing since the age of eight, Stella grew up in the North San Francisco Bay Area, steeped in her mother’s eclectic music collection. Some of her early musical influences were Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, Buena Vista Social Club, Billie Holiday, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Ella Fitzgerald. After studying acting at Interlochen Arts Academy and Syracuse University, she spent many years as a Shakespearian actress based out of New York City, where she began to sing Jazz again with the incredible Marjorie Eliot in Harlem. She returned to California in 2014 and began playing music full time, starting with the Bay Area-based band, Bandjango Collectif, an edgy band that mixes French Jazz Manouche, New Orleans Hot Swing, and Eclectic Global Folk.