2021 Grammy Nominations - Music Artist Highlights

Gretchen Parlato is an American jazz singer. She has performed and recorded with musicians such as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Kenny Barron, Esperanza Spalding, Terence Blanchard, Marcus Miller and Lionel Loueke.

Josiah Alexander Sila (born 25 June 2003), known professionally as Joey Alexander, is an Indonesian jazz pianist. He became the first Indonesian musician to chart on Billboard 200 when his album My Favorite Things debuted at number 174 and then peaked at 59.

Widely regarded as a wunderkind, Alexander taught himself to play jazz at age six by listening to his father's classic jazz albums. He won the Grand Prix at the 2013 Master-Jam Fest when he was nine.

In 2014, Wynton Marsalis invited him to play at Jazz at Lincoln Center. His first album, My Favorite Things, was released in 2015 when he was 11 years old. Joey Alexander played at the Montreal and Newport Jazz Festivals in 2015 and has performed for Herbie Hancock, Bill Clinton, Wendy Kiess, and Barack Obama.

Cory Alexander Henry (born February 27, 1987) is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, organist, and record producer. A former member of Snarky Puppy, Henry launched his solo artist career with Art of Love, his first independent release. On October 30, 2020, he released his sophomore full-length project called Something to Say which included Marc E. Bassy written track "No Guns" . That same year he released Art of Love Live and Christmas With You both under Culture Collective management and records.

Henry was selected by Quincy Jones to headline his curated Soundtrack of America series opening of The Shed in NYC. On August 5, 2021, Beats Electronics premiered a commercial featuring athlete Sha'Carri Richardson featuring the track "Run to Glory" which was co-produced and written by Cory Henry, Kanye West and Dr. Dre. Henry was later credited as a producer and composer for the song "24" from West's tenth studio album Donda.

Ben Williams is an American jazz bassist.

Matthew Stevens is a Canadian jazz guitarist and composer.

Esperanza Emily Spalding (born October 18, 1984) is an American jazz bassist, singer, songwriter, and composer. Her accolades include four Grammy Awards, a Boston Music Award, and a Soul Train Music Award.

A native of Portland, Oregon, Spalding began playing music professionally in her childhood, performing as a violinist in the Chamber Music Society of Oregon at age five. She was later both self-taught and trained on a number of instruments, including guitar and bass. Her proficiency earned her academic scholarships to Portland State University and the Berklee College of Music, both of which she attended, studying music.

Spalding released her first album, Junjo, in 2006 on the Spanish label Avya Musica, after which she signed with the independent American label Heads Up, who released her 2007 self-titled album. Her third studio album, Chamber Music Society (2010), was a commercial success, charting at number 34 on the Billboard 200, and resulting in Spalding winning her first Grammy Award for Best New Artist; Spalding was the first jazz artist to win in this category. She saw further acclaim for her fourth release, Radio Music Society (2012), which earned the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album, as well as the track "City of Roses" winning for Best Arrangement, Instrument and Vocals.

Cécile McLorin Salvant (born August 28, 1989) is an American jazz vocalist. She was the winner of the first prize in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010, releasing her first album, Cécile, shortly thereafter. Her second album, WomanChild, was released in 2013 on Mack Avenue Records, receiving a 2014 Grammy Award nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Salvant won four categories in the 2014 Down Beat Critics Poll: Jazz Album of the Year, Female Vocalist, Rising Star–Jazz Artist, and Rising Star–Female Vocalist. Her third album, For One to Love, was released on September 5, 2015, to critical acclaim from The New York Times, The Guardian, and Los Angeles Times. It won her the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2016.

Lionel Loueke (born 27 April 1973) is a guitarist and vocalist born in Benin. He moved to Ivory Coast in 1990 to study at the National Institute of Art. He attended the American School of Modern Music in Paris, France from 1994–1998. In 1999, Loueke was awarded a scholarship to Berklee College of Music, where he earned a degree in Jazz Performance in 2000.

Lionel Loueke grew up in what he has described as a family of poor intellectuals in the West African country of Benin. He began playing percussion instruments around the age of 9 but was influenced by an older brother who played guitar, which he began playing himself in his late teens. It took Loueke a year to earn the $50 he needed to buy his first guitar. However, he could not afford to replace the strings, which had to be ordered from Nigeria. Instead, he soaked his strings in vinegar to keep them clean. When the strings broke, he had to replace them with bicycle brake cables which were hard on his fingers.

Edward Simon (born July 27, 1969) is a Venezuelan jazz pianist and composer.

Simon was born in Punta Cardón, Venezuela. When he was ten years old, he went to the United States of America to study at the Performing Arts School in Philadelphia. After graduating, he attended the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied classical piano, then the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied jazz piano.

In 1988, he recorded as a sideman with Greg Osby, then worked as a member of the band Horizon led by Bobby Watson. For the next eight years he was a member of Terence Blanchard's band. He has also worked with Herbie Mann, Paquito D'Rivera, Bobby Hutcherson, Jerry Gonzalez, John Patitucci, Arturo Sandoval, Manny Oquendo, and Don Byron. Simon recorded Beauty Within (AudioQuest, 1994), his first album as a bandleader, with Horacio Hernández and bass guitarist Anthony Jackson. During the same year, he was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. Then the following year he composed Rumba Neurotica for the Relache Ensemble.

Marquis Hill is an American jazz trumpet player, composer, and bandleader from Chicago, Illinois. His musical style stems from African-American music, incorporating hip-hop, R&B, Chicago house and neo-soul to jazz. In 2014 Hill won the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Trumpet Competition. He strongly advocates for the education of the next generation of musicians through active mentoring, treating the music he creates as a living art.

Robert Andre Glasper is an American pianist, record producer, songwriter, and musical arranger. His artistry bridges several different musical and artistic genres, mostly centered on jazz. To date, Glasper has won five Grammy Awards and received eleven nominations across eight categories.

Christian Scott (born March 31, 1983), known professionally as Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah), is an American jazz trumpeter, multi instrumentalist, composer, and producer.

He has been nominated for six Grammy Awards, is a two-time Edison Award winner, the recipient of the JazzFM Innovator/Innovation of the year Award in 2016, Jazz Journalist Trumpeter of the Year, The Herb Alpert Award in the arts, and The Changing Worlds Peace Maker Award. Adjuah is the grandson of Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. and Grand Griot of New Orleans and Guardians Institute founder Herreast Harrison, the nephew of jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., and is a chieftain of the Xodokan Nation of the maroon tribes of New Orleans.

Theodore Lee Croker (July 18, 1985) is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, producer and vocalist. He is a Grammy Award nominee, three-time Echo Award nominee, as well as a Theodore Presser Award recipient.

Croker has released seven studio albums — Fundamentals (2006), In the Tradition (2009), Afro Physicist (2014), Escape Velocity (2016), Star People Nation (2019), Blk2Life/A Future Past (2021) and Love Quantum (2022). He has also been featured on J. Cole's 4 Your Eyez Only (2016) and Common's Black America Again (2016) and Ari Lennox's debut album, Shea Butter Baby (2019).

Croker was born July 18, 1985, in Leesburg, Florida, and is the second son of William Henry Croker, a civil rights activist, high school principal and farmer, and Alicia Cheatham, a guidance counselor, and the grandson of Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Doc Cheatham.

Takuya Kuroda (jap. 黒田 卓也, Kuroda Takuya; * 21. Februar 1980 in Ashiya, Präfektur Hyōgo) ist ein japanischer Jazztrompeter und Arrangeur.

Takuya Kuroda spielte zunächst in der Big Band der Schule. Mehr Jazzerfahrungen sammelte er erst, als er zu Jam-Sessions nach Kobe fuhr. 2003 zog er in die USA, wo er zunächst einen Kurs am Berklee College of Music besuchte, bevor er nach New York wechselte. Dort studierte er an der New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music bis zum Abschluss 2006. Seitdem arbeitet Kuroda in der dortigen Jazzszene; stilistisch orientiert an Dizzy Gillespie und Clifford Brown. Früh holte ihn sein Studienkollege José James als Begleiter.

2010 erschien Kurodas Debütalbum While Bitter and High. Er arbeitete u. a. mit Junior Mance (Piano), Greg Tardy (Saxophon), Rob Swift (DJ), Jirō Yoshida (Gitarre), Andy Ezrin, Akoya Afrobeat und der Valery Ponomarev Big Band. Ferner wirkte er bei Alben von Jose James (Blackmagic) und Jiro Yoshida (Cut Back, Made In New York), China Moses, Matthias Bublath (Eight Cylinder Bigband) sowie des japanischen J-Pop-Musikers JuJu mit (Wonderful Life und My Life), für die er den Bläsersatz arrangierte. Kuroda arbeitet mit der von ihm mitgeleiteten Band Chicken Gravy, einer Formation im Spektrum zwischen Jazz, Soul und Funk und einem Jazzquartett. 2014 erschien seine CD Rising Son auf Blue Note Records. Das 2016er Studioalbum Zigzagger wurde bei Concord Records veröffentlicht. Im Jahre 2019 erschien wiederum bei Blue Note das Album Blue Note Voyage von Takuya Kuroda / Akihiro Nishiguchi / May Inoue / Jun Miyakawa / Ai Kuwabara / Ryuta Tsunoda / Tomo Kanno und Shun Ishiwaka. 2020 legte er das Album Fly Moon Die Soon vor, gefolgt von Midnight Crisp (2022).

Julian Lage ( LAHZH; born December 25, 1987) is an American guitarist and composer.

A child prodigy, Lage was the subject of the 1996 short documentary film Jules at Eight. At 12, he performed at the 2000 Grammy Awards. Three years later, he became a faculty member of the Stanford Jazz Workshop at Stanford University. Classically trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he has studied at Sonoma State University and the Ali Akbar College of Music. He graduated from the Berklee College of Music in 2008.

On March 24, 2009 EmArcy released his debut album Sounding Point to favorable reviews. It was nominated for the 2010 Grammy Award Best Contemporary Jazz Album. His second album, Gladwell, was released April 26, 2011, to positive reviews. His first solo acoustic album, World's Fair, was released on March 2, 2015, and his fourth album, Arclight, was released on March 11, 2016.