Charenee Wade

Award-winning vocalist, arranger, educator, and composer Charenée Wade has excited audiences all over the world with her ingenuity and vibrancy. A recipient of the 2017 Jazz at Lincoln Center Millennial Swing Award and first runner-up in the 2010 Thelonious Vocal Competition, Wade has worked with artists including Wynton Marsalis, Terri Lyne Carrington, Christian McBride, Winard Harper, Eric Reed, Jacky Terrason, Curtis Lundy, Robert Glasper, and Kyle Abraham. In her early years, Wade was selected as one of four artists for the Dianne Reeves Young Artist Workshop at Carnegie Hall as well as Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead Program, where she was mentored by Carmen Lundy and Curtis Fuller and performed her original music at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. An alumna of what is now the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, Wade completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music performance at the Manhattan School of Music. Her latest CD, Offering: The Music of Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, is a powerful reinterpretation of the poet’s musical library, which features notable artists including Lonnie Plaxico, Marcus Miller, Stefon Harris, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, and Christian McBride (spoken word). Wade has performed at top venues including Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Jazz Standard, and the Apollo, and she has performed at major festivals worldwide including Montreux, Copenhagen, Newport, Istanbul, Spoleto, Princeton, Bern, and Savannah Music, and Jazz En Tete. A passionate educator who has taught master classes and private lessons at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University, and University of Texas, among others, Wade has also has taught at clinics and jazz camps all over the world, including in New Orleans, the U.K., Israel, Croatia, Spain, Australia, and Taiwan.