Cynthia Holiday

Showman's Jazz Club, Harlem Jazz Shrines 2012. Cynthia Holiday is a vocalist and songwriter who grew up in a house of jazz lovers. Her stepfather, Calvin Hughes, played the trumpet with Frank Foster, Clark Terry, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, and toured with Big Maybelle. The Newark School for the Arts was the beginning for Holiday’s vocal training. She later met the late jazz composer, Duke Anderson with whom she continued her vocal studies and piano. Anderson was so impressed that he introduced her to Bob Harris who hired her to sing with the Bob Harris Orchestra in 1990. Holiday’s recent jazz vocal coaches include Kevin Mahogany, Marion Cowings, Myrna Lake, Radam Schwartz and the late, Rita DaCosta Turrentine.