Isabel Smith is a Los Angeles–based jazz vocalist, pianist, and bandleader of Strada Swing. 

 

Some of her biggest influences include Ella Fitzgerald, Blossom Dearie, Sarah Vaughan, and Cyrille Aimée. Her music draws from swing, bossa nova, French jazz, and the Great American Songbook, with plenty of room for improvisation and spontaneity.

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In 2016, Isabel started Strada Swing at UC Berkeley out of a love for French and Gypsy jazz. Since then, she has performed throughout Los Angeles, including at the historic Cicada Club in Downtown LA, as well as at Mezzrow in New York City and in Paris.

 

She especially loves scat singing, improvising, and playing off the musicians around her. Vocal director Marc Gasway described her this way: “There’s a lot of magic in Isabel Smith’s voice. She has a lithe, rounded tone... She thinks like an instrumentalist because she is one.”

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When she’s not performing, Isabel is a music educator. She has choral director for Youth Orhcestra Los Angeles, and her students have performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall and at the Hollywood Bowl alongside Grammy-winning artist Natalia Lafourcade and Coldplay and Gustavo Dudamel.

 

In addition, she  teaches with Jazz Empowers, where she gets to introduce kids to jazz, brings them on stage, and teaches them how to scat sing. 

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In addition, Isabel is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Clinical Psychology at Antioch University, with the goal of becoming a licensed marriage and family therapist. 

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Venues we've performed: 

• The Cicada Club

• Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village

• The Peninsula Beverly Hills

• Hotel Bel-Air

• The California Club

• The Pendry Hotel in West Hollywood

• Feinstein’s at Vitello’s Jazz Club 

• The Culver Hotel

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