Cassandra Wilson, an acclaimed, Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist, has passed away. She was 70.
Wilson passed away in Jackson, Mississippi, on Tuesday morning, according to AP News.
In a statement to jazz radio station WBGO, Wilson’s passing was confirmed.
“It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Cassandra Wilson, the Grammy Award-winning and legendary jazz artist. Cassandra Wilson transitioned peacefully at home, surrounded by family, close friends, and her manager,” the statement read.
Taking to Instagram, Jon Batiste paid tribute to Wilson.
“She had an unmistakable vocal tone, phrasing, and her approach of weaving folkloric, R&B, and diasporic music together with experimental and popular genres had a major impact on me,” Batiste wrote.
WILSON WAS A ONE-OF-A-KIND VOCALIST
A prominent figure in modern jazz, Wilson reshaped the genre by pushing past traditional boundaries and integrating Delta blues, folk, pop, and country into her repertoire.
Rising to prominence in the 1980s as a founding vocalist for the avant-garde M-Base Collective in New York, she later achieved massive critical and commercial success with her landmark 1993 Blue Note album Blue Light ‘Til Dawn. Over her career, she earned two Grammy Awards—including Best Jazz Vocal Performance for New Moon Daughter (1996) and Best Jazz Vocal Album for Loverly (2008). She also performed as a lead vocalist on Wynton Marsalis’s Blood on the Fields, the first jazz composition to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Hailed as “America’s Best Singer” by Time magazine in 2001, Wilson’s lasting impact on American music was formally recognized in 2022 when she received the nation’s highest jazz honor, being named a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master.
John Horhn, mayor of Jackson, said the city “has lost an extraordinary native daughter, and the world has lost a singular musical voice.”
“Cassandra Wilson carried the sound, spirit and history of Mississippi with her wherever her music reached,” Horn said. “Her work had a rare depth of character. And a profound understanding of how music moves people, tells stories and connects generations.”