Barbara Carroll

54 Below is honored to welcome jazz legend Barbara Carroll to our stage for a series of seven exciting jazz brunches. In 1947, Leonard Feather dubber her "the first girl ever to play bebop piano." In a career that has spanned more than half a century (she played her first New York engagement opposite
Dizzy Gillespie’s big band at the Downbeat Club in 1947), Ms. Carroll is an elegant jazz pianist, composer and vocalist, long recognized as one of the premier players of swinging jazz piano. Her inventive piano playing and totally unique vocal sound leads her into transforming any composition into her own art with her trademark emotional directness and respect for the tune, its lyrics and its many possibilities. Says Stephen Holden in The New York Times, "Barbara Carroll is about as good as it gets!"