About MAYA
Maya Cunningham is a "triple threat" - a jazz vocalist, visual artist and scholar. As a vocal artist, she in the lineage of Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Etta Jones, and Lorez Alexandria. She is a master storyteller through song, a virtuoso improvisor and has a shimmering five octave range. Her approach draws on the emotional delivery of the Holiday lineage and the improvisational spontaneity of Vaughan. She sings in several African languages, including Ewe, Bamana, and Setwana. She is also a composer and fuses her music with visual arts works in collage/montage, fused glass, paint, monoprint and mixed media. As an ethnomusicologist, her research focus is on African American cultural identity and traditional African and African American musics.
Cunningham has been a featured vocalist at venues like Jazz at Lincoln Center, performing Max Roach’s We Insist! – the Freedom Now Suite, and has performed national tours with well - known jazz musicians, including Wycliffe Gordon, Ali Jackson, Stephon Harris and Rodney Whitaker. Combining the improvisation and phrasing of the many early jazz singers who have influenced her, she reinterprets standards, new songs and her own compositions with an original style that is all her own. Her shimmering five octave range all at once floats into the stratosphere of the rarified coloratura and then swoops back down into gut - bucket soul power.
Cunningham holds a Bachelors of Music degree in jazz studies (voice) from Howard University and a Master of Arts degree in jazz performance from Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. She is also a scholar of Black music and culture, and has received an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, College Park and an MA in Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is pursuing a PhD at the WEB Du Bois Institute for African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is also a Fulbright scholar and Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow.
Cunningham has been a featured vocalist at venues like Jazz at Lincoln Center, performing Max Roach’s We Insist! – the Freedom Now Suite, and has performed national tours with well - known jazz musicians, including Wycliffe Gordon, Ali Jackson, Stephon Harris and Rodney Whitaker. Combining the improvisation and phrasing of the many early jazz singers who have influenced her, she reinterprets standards, new songs and her own compositions with an original style that is all her own. Her shimmering five octave range all at once floats into the stratosphere of the rarified coloratura and then swoops back down into gut - bucket soul power.
Cunningham holds a Bachelors of Music degree in jazz studies (voice) from Howard University and a Master of Arts degree in jazz performance from Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. She is also a scholar of Black music and culture, and has received an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, College Park and an MA in Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is pursuing a PhD at the WEB Du Bois Institute for African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is also a Fulbright scholar and Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow.