ABOUT OUR ENTERTAINER – LALAH HATHAWAY
GRAMMY AWARD WINNING SOUL AND JAZZ SINGER
“Hathaway sings honest, straight-up music from the soul.”
Daughter of famed soul singer Donny Hathaway and classically-trained musician Eulaulah Hathaway, Lalah was born in Chicago and raised on the sounds of Chaka Khan and Stevie Wonder. Her name, which means "music of the night" in Arabic, serves as much as a harbinger of her talent as her lineage. Witness to her father's collaborations with Roberta Flack throughout her childhood, is it any wonder that Lalah would go on to continue her father's legacy of soulful sounds with a decided jazz feel?
On her 1990 self-titled debut, Lalah Hathaway exposed the music world to a voice that seemed to capture and resurrect the smokey jazz clubs of the 1940s. The critically-acclaimed album established her within the industry as a mature and talented artist worthy of attention. In 1999, Hathaway teamed up with famed jazz pioneer, Joe Sample, for the song lives on—on which Hathaway adds her lush vocals to seven of the album's eleven tracks. The album is considered a true masterpiece. Her vocal interpretations of "When Your World Turns Blue," "When Your Life Was Low" and her father's classic standard, "For All We Know" are chilling, and The Song Lives On became the best album of that year and an essential disc for lovers of torchy ballads. It also showed that, while Hathaway was certainly notable as a modern R&B stylist, her capabilities as a jazz singer had developed in an astonishing fashion, to a point virtually unmatched among current artists.
Hathaway appeared with her band on Prince’s Welcome to America opening concert at the Izod Center in December 2010. Her sixth album, Where It All Begins, will be released October 18, 2011. She is forging her own path and revitalizing a standard of musicianship many thought had long since passed away.