GRAMMY-nominated vocalist Candice Ivory (a.k.a. the Queen of Avant Soul), was born in Millington, Tennessee, to a musical family steeped in Southern culture. Her great-uncle Will Roy Sanders was a Memphis-based blues musician, her cousins sang in the Mississippi gospel group the Salem Harmonizers, and at the age of eleven, Ivory joined a Richmond, Virginia youth choir directed by future R&B legend D’Angelo. By fifteen, Ivory had launched her career as a professional musician: her family relocated to Memphis, and she started singing jazz in the nightclubs on Beale Street. Ivory would devote the next several years to studying jazz, initially in Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead residency (held at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.) and subsequently at the New School University in New York, where she earned a degree in vocal performance.
While in New York, Ivory recorded her first two albums, path-undefined and Questography. On these albums, Ivory began to integrate jazz with a musical form of her own creation that she would come to call Avant Soul. By the time Ivory recorded her third album, Love Music, the Avant Soul genre was fully formed. Then Ivory pivoted to blues, recording a pair of acclaimed albums that drew on her early musical experiences. On When the Levee Breaks, Ivory paid homage to the blues guitarist and composer Memphis Minnie. Her next album, New Southern Vintage, featured Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, David Evans, Ben Levin, and a host of guest artists. When the Levee Breaks and New Southern Vintage were acclaimed by critics around the world, and Ivory’s tours in support of these albums brought her to Europe, South America, and the Caribbean. Now Ivory is an in-demand recording artist, performer, and clinician. She also teaches jazz and contemporary voice at Washington University in St. Louis.