Description

The daughter of a Japanese mother and an American father, Valerie Joyce spent her childhood in Japan and began her musical education at the age of six. She moved to Tacoma, Washington in 1991 to study piano. It was during this time that she discovered her love of jazz and began singing in the university choir. At an audition for Berklee College of Music in Boston, she was offered a scholarship to study vocal jazz, but turned it down. Back in Washington, she focused more on her vocal training, taking lessons from Michael Brockman, Jay Clayton and Jerome Gray.

Valerie Joyce recorded her first album, Reverie, in Seattle in 2002 with local musicians. This brought her into contact with David and Norman Chesky, for whose label Chesky Records she recorded New York Blue in 2005. The recording was made at St Peters Church in Chelsea with sound engineer Nicholas Prout. Fabio Camorani had the tapes remastered at 33 1/3 rpm by Miles Showell using the half-speed process and released them on vinyl for the first time on his AudioNautes label.