 Long
before Tierney Sutton had even heard about jazz, the three-time Grammy
award nominee was engaged in some very jazz-like behavior.
"I would have a melody in my head,
and I’d play it over and over again and then change it up into
something different," says Sutton, who grew up in Glendale.
"I now realize it was improvisational. It was my thing and it’s
what jazz is all about."
Sutton performed in school musicals,
talent shows and sang in the choir. And that’s about where her
musical aspirations ended. That is until the Nicolet High School
graduate took a summer job as a singing "Heidel Honey"
waitress at the Heidel House Resort in Green Lake. Sutton soon
discovered Mary Jaye, a female jazz singer, who performed at a nearby
club. Sutton was hooked and suddenly, the Wesleyan University college
student, who was studying literature and Russian, found a new passion.
"Jazz is all I listened to for
about 10 years," Sutton says.
And it has paid off. After attending
the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Sutton bypassed New York, the
traditional jazz musician career move, and relocated to Los Angeles.
It was there, she would find her eventual partners in the Tierney
Sutton Band: pianist Christian Jacob, bassists Trey Henry and Kevin
Axt and drummer Ray Brinker.
The band has headlined at Carnegie
Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center and Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater. The
group will be back in the Milwaukee area July 8 as the jazz headliner
for the Gathering on the Green, a three-day music and performing arts
event in Mequon Rotary Park.
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