Emmaline (rhymes with clementine) is a 21-year-old singer and songwriter possessing a smoky, jazz-infused, genre-fluid voice admirable as much for the range of traditional sounds she draws upon, as for her startling freshness — fresh, as in new and innovative as well as in attitude and sly humor. Her songs are bold in statement and soft in feel, her flow supple and precise. She prides herself in being one who has listened with deep intention to her heroes — Anita O’Day and Billie Holiday, Erykah Badu and D’Angelo — and has already learned to rise above questions of category with a healthy sense of musical identity and forethought.

“I consider myself a jazz singer,” Emmaline says. “I have been singing jazz my entire life — I studied it and I think that there is a place for me in the jazz world. Whether my music is strictly jazz I cannot say and in fact, would rather not. To me jazz is art, not a set of rules.”