Tuesdays on the Terrace At Home Edition with Sharel Cassity

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Saxophonist, woodwindist, composer, and educator Sharel Cassity is a musician in the New York, Chicago, and international jazz scenes. For the last consecutive nine years, Cassity has been featured in Downbeat magazine as a “rising star alto saxophonist.” She won the 2007 ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award and was inducted to the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. She has shared the stage with jazz luminaries including Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, as well as mainstream artists Aretha Franklin, Natalie Merchant, Vanessa Williams, and Trisha Yearwood. Cassity has released four albums as a bandleader and has appeared on over 30 as a sideman, toured 24 countries, and performed at leading venues like the Newport Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, and the North Sea Jazz Festival. Recently relocated to the Chicagoland area with her husband and son, Cassity is currently a professor of saxophone and piano at Elgin Community College. Cassity received her MA from Juilliard on full scholarship and is now a proud Vandoren Performing Artist and AMT Microphone Artist.