Wendy Beach Group

New Mexico based vocalist and bassist Wendy Beach has been performing for over 40 years. A native of the Detroit area, she listened to many musical styles growing up, lending to her own versatile, timeless style that is rooted in the blues. A featured vocalist with the prestigious Nelson Riddle Orchestra (Frank Sinatra’s band which also accompanied Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee), Beach has performed with saxophonists Frank Morgan & Doug Lawrence as well as trumpeter Michael Morreale, and has won numerous New Mexico MicLine Awards for recordings with the late, great Albuquerque vocalist, Michael Herndon. A former member of John Trentacosta’s celebrated Santa Fe-based band, Straight Up, she appeared on its much-acclaimed CD, Live Jazz in the Desert. She is a frequent performer for the New Mexico Jazz Workshop’s consistently sold-out concerts of “Women’s Voices” as well as their “Ladies Sing the Blues” events.  Currently performing in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, Beach recently released The Martini Sessions, a CD of jazz standards. This past January 2023, she and her band performed for NM Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s Inaugural Ball and as she notes that “the band had so much fun rehearsing and enjoying the music we were playing that we created a band which is preparing to record in the near future.” Tonight they’ll be playing new takes on old standards, plus some newer tunes, and a few originals. She will be joined by Alex Murzyn on sax, flute and clarinet; John Funkhouser, piano; Cyrus Campbell, bass; and Arnaldo Acosta, drums.