New York-born Camille Thurman is a young jazz artist whose vocals and saxophone playing echo some of the great performers who preceded her from vocalists Betty Carter and Ella Fitzgerald to sax players John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon. Leading her own quartet she has performed at major jazz venues including the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Center and the Jazz Gallery plus the International Women in Jazz Festival and the Super Jazz Ashdod Israel Festival. She has accompanied top artists such as Harry Connick Jr., Renee Fleming, Alicia Keys and Chaka Khan and performed with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, Russell Malone and Nicholas Payton.
Raised in the borough of Queens in New York City, she learned to play the saxophone as a teenager and played in a jazz band at the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art. After attending Binghampton University in central New York State, she moved back to the Big Apple in 2009 and played in local clubs. She played with Charlie Persip's big band and was mentored by veteran saxophonists Antoine Roney and George Coleman. Her debut album 'Origins' came out in 2014 followed by 'Spirit Child' the same year. She signed with Chesky Records for her third album 'Into the Moment', on which she sings and plays accompanied by Mark Whitfield on guitar, Ben Allison on bass and Billy Drummond on drums. It went to number 25 on Billboard's Jazz Albums Chart in the summer of 2017.
