My Funny Valentine with Maud Hixson

Hailed as “gently virtuosic” (All About Jazz), Maud Hixson is a devoted exponent of great songs, ranging from the classic Great American Songbook to the often unsung or forgotten compositions awaiting rediscovery.

Based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Maud is the co-founder of the continental jazz sextet French 75 with clarinetist Tony Balluff. She made her Guthrie Theater debut in the Noel Coward revue Coward’s Women, and has also appeared in Park Square Theater’s The Soul of Gershwin. She teamed with Sir Richard Rodney Bennett in 2012 for the long-running Midtown at Midday concert series at Saint Peter’s in Manhattan and debuted her show Skyscraper Wits in London and New York in 2015.

Maud is the recipient of three Artist Initiative grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, one of which supported the research for her album “Don’t Let A Good Thing Get Away”, comprised of compositions by Broadway composer Michael (Mickey) Leonard. Featuring Tex Arnold, Steve LaSpina, Warren Vaché and Gene Bertoncini, it was recorded at Nola Studios in Steinway Hall, NYC in 2013. Her latest recording “Listening For Your Song”, features music from the pre-Songbook era referred to in the Betsy-Tacy series by Minnesota author Maud Hart Lovelace. Musician and historian Michael Feinstein observed: “Her vocal style is so warm, compelling and intimate—it’s clear she cares about the words and telling the story, with clarity and without artifice—almost a lost art these days.”

Maud received a Next Step Grant from the McKnight Foundation in 2015 and her most recent Artist Initiative Grant funded a big band project in 2017. In 2016 she made her second appearance at Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center in a tribute to singer Sylvia Syms, hosted by Rex Reed and presented by the Mabel Mercer Foundation. After her Chicago debut last spring, the Chicago Tribune’s Howard Reich proclaimed, “Hixson stood out as the biggest revelation at the Chicago Cabaret Convention.”