By Andrew Gilbert and Christian Kallen
When Tiffany Austin arrived in the Bay Area in 2009, she had decided to put music on the back burner. After about five years of supporting herself in Japan singing pop and soul, she was ready to pursue a different path via a scholarship to UC Berkeley School of Law.
While the Los Angeles native wasn’t closing the door on the arts (“I went to law school with an eye to be an advocate for artists,” she said), she seemed set to trade in her career singing in bars for a new one as a member of the bar.
Since graduating from the Berkeley School of Law in 2012, Austin has indeed become an advocate for artists. But instead of putting down the microphone, she’s become one of the Bay Area’s most potent cultural advocates by raising her voice. One of jazz’s most soulful vocalists, she’s also become a highly effective organizer and educator with an array of projects and pursuits spanning the entire region.
One of those projects is the Freedom Jazz Choir, a volunteer vocal group that comes together once a year as part of Healdsburg Jazz’s community mission. Austin has been connected with the FJC for the past 13 years—since Marcus Shelby encouraged her to join him in the program at Healdsburg Jazz. Since 2020, she has been the music director, composer and arranger for the choir.
“Marcus, you know, he didn’t really give me a choice,” Austin said, laughing.
Marcus Shelby
No collaborator has enjoyed a closer view of Austin’s evolution than Marcus Shelby, the San Francisco bassist, composer and bandleader with an ever-more-expansive bailiwick of responsibilities, and since 2020 music director of Healdsburg Jazz.
They first met in Tokyo in 2009, when Austin was invited to an after-show jam session by some friends in the Basie band. Shelby was there and was impressed by her performance. They exchanged contact information and connected stateside.
Shelby was then in the midst of a long-running monthly residency at the Union Square eatery Café Claude, and she became a regular in the gig. Before long, he was calling her for dates with his quintet and orchestra, “and she became a reliable and astute collaborator,” he said.
In 2012, Shelby asked her to come in and work with the Healdsburg vocalists as an assistant choir director. “I was really excited to step into that role,” Austin said. “I had been giving private lessons and some small group lessons, so to step into a larger ensemble setting was really exciting.”
Healdsburg Jazz
Then Shelby took over as the Healdsburg Jazz Festival’s artistic director in 2020, and promoted Austin from assistant to music director of the choir. The promotions were occasioned by the retirement of Jessica Felix from the director role; Shelby was the natural successor.
“The other person I want to mention here is Jessica Felix,” said Austin, speaking of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival founder. “Just working in proximity with her and seeing her vision, her passion and her follow-through. She manifests things. She’s an alchemist. She makes something out of nothing all the time.”
First rehearsal for the Healdsburg Freedom Jazz Choir is next month; sign-ups are still being taken at healdsburgjazz.org and Austin expects about 25 participants this year.
“The theme for this year is Roots and Rhythms, celebrating the Blues and Beyond,” she said. ”We always like to contextualize jazz in terms of the roots music that it came out of, and also the music that it fed into.” She anticipates that the program will range from traditional roots music, such as a ring shout or freedom songs, into classic jazz, then to the music that followed jazz, such as funk, hip-hop and R&B.
“It’s an eclectic repertoire this year because we want to show the arc of the music,” Austin said.
‘Grandmama Place’
Born and raised in South Los Angeles, Austin grew up in a house filled with music. Her parents listened to soul and pop masters like Donny Hathaway and Stevie Wonder, while her Louisiana Creole grandmother introduced her to jazz.
She credits her grandmother with “teaching me what soul was about,” Austin said. “She had a great sense of herself, and didn’t let anyone make her feel less than herself. When I sing the blues or jazz, I draw on that Grandmama place.”
After graduating from the Los Angeles High School of the Arts, she went on to major in creative writing at Cal State Northridge. During the year she spent studying in the U.K., Austin began sitting in at jazz sessions around London. Then she set out for Tokyo with the plan that she’d look for work as a singer and spend a year in Japan. Austin ended up staying through 2009.
During her first grueling year of law school, she again turned to music as a source of balance and sanity. Working with Shelby, she quickly made a name for herself. A series of prestigious gigs and residencies introduced her as the most exciting new voice in the region.
Life After Law School
Working with tenor saxophonist Howard Wiley on a program of songs associated with Hoagy Carmichael led to her 2015 recording debut, Nothing But Soul, the album that catapulted her into national prominence with a glowing review on public radio’s Fresh Air. She followed up with 2018’s Unbroken, a soul-powered meditation on African American culture’s extraordinary resilience, produced by Grammy Award-winning jazz champion Richard Seidel.
Beyond serving as music director, composer and arranger for the Healdsburg Freedom Jazz Choir, she’s turned Albany’s Juneteenth Festival into the East Bay’s flagship celebration of the holiday (with co-director Kenya Moses).
After 10 weeks of rehearsal, the Freedom Jazz Choir will have their big performance at the 26th annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival itself, on Saturday, June 21. The next day another of Austin’s projects will erupt onto Solano Avenue, the Albany Juneteenth Festival.
Asked how she could handle so many responsibilities, she laughed again and said, “I just roll up my sleeves. I think law school really prepared me to multitask.”
A different version of this article appeared as “The Voice,” by Andrew Gilbert, in the March issue of East Bay Magazine.
