Nancie Banks

Nancie Banks emerged from a household steeped in music, where her father’s vocal prowess, extending across four octaves, earned him a place in the church choir and her mother accompanied on piano. Instruction at the keyboard began under her mother’s guidance before Banks reached the age of five. Later, after relocating to New York, she studied with Afro-Cuban jazz innovator Alberto Socarras, spiritual composer Edward S. Boatner, Barry Harris, and the Jazzmobile Workshops led by Billy Taylor. Her first New York appearance took place alongside Harris at one of his concerts. A pivotal opportunity arose when Charlie Byrd engaged her as vocalist with his big band, and through that same connection she encountered trombonist Clarence Banks, who would become her husband. She subsequently formed multiple quintets and quartets, directing her groups at venues across the city while also appearing with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. Additional collaborations included work with Walter Davis Jr., Dexter Gordon, Michael Max Fleming, Bob Cunningham, Duke Jordan, Walter Booker, Charlie Persip, Sadik Hakim, C. Sharpe, John Hicks, Woody Shaw, Bross Townsend, Jon Hendricks, and Walter Bishop Jr. Born Nancy Manzuk in West Virginia, she grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, before moving to New York, where she received a jazz scholarship in 1989 to attend New School University. While performing in the university big band under Cecil Bridgewater’s direction, she assembled her own orchestra. The Nancie Banks Orchestra has appeared at numerous New York clubs, festivals, and special events. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts invited the nineteen-piece ensemble to Washington, D.C., for a concert at the Mary Lou Williams Women’s Jazz Festival. Her debut recording for Consolidated Artists, Waves of Peace, received favorable reviews and earned a Village Voice nomination for its list of Best Jazz Records of the Year in 1993; Cadence magazine likewise placed the album among the year’s outstanding releases. Two years afterward, Bert’s Blues attracted further attention, securing recognition from both Cadence and Coda as one of the year’s strongest recordings, and it received radio airplay in Japan, Brazil, South Africa, the Ukraine, Germany, and France. Beyond singing and composing, Banks works as a lyricist, arranger, and producer, conducts clinics at high schools and colleges, gives private lessons, serves as music-preparation supervisor for film projects, and acts as a music copyist for Broadway productions.