Spider Saloff
"A Billy Holiday type quality...Saloff will win you over completely!" - NY Post
"Slyly sophisticated...A kind of ideal." - Chicago Tribune
"Saloff's flexible pop soprano pipes are tops!" - Variety
"A wicked way with a lyric and a glint of well-controlled mischief." - New York Times
"One of the finest jazz singers working in this or any other city," The Chicago Tribune stated emphatically. "A wicked way with a lyric!" exclaimed The New York Times.
Heard world wide as the co-star and co-creator of the internationally syndicated Public Radio series Words and Music , Spider Saloff has received critical acclaim nationally and internationally. Her CD release Like Glass not only received praise as a recording, but Saloff's original songs have charmed the critics.
Recently, Saloff was featured with the prestigious Chicago Jazz Orchestra in a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. She received the honor of performing the American Premiere of a newly discovered song by the great Billy Strayhorn, "So This Is Love". And as one of the rare officially sanctioned acts of the Gershwin Centennial, her concert, Spider Saloff Sings Gershwin, toured the U.S. and headlined the St. Petersburg Gershwin Festival in Russia.
Ms. Saloff has played such renowned jazz and night club venues as New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center, Iridium, Joe's Pub, Birdland ,The Russian Tea Room, Michael's Pub, and The Algonquin, as well as San Francisco's Jazz at Pearl's, and Plush Room and Seattle's Triple Door. And Chicago's famed Gold Star Sardine Bar, The Green Mill, and the Fairmont Hotel.
Other leading venues include symphony orchestras and concert spaces such as; The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, Wilmington Grand Opera, Wallingford Symphony, The Castro Theater is San Francisco, and Town Hall and Dick Hyman's Jazz in July in New York.
Spider Saloff has recorded and performed with such jazz luminaries as Les Paul, Tom Harrell, Nick Brignola, Ray Drummond, Harry Allen, Mark Murphy and Dick Hyman. She has worked frequently with Larry Novak, Tony Monte, Steve LaSpina, Ken Peplowski and Bill Charlap.
A five-time winner of the prestigious MAC Award, including one for Best Female Jazz Vocalist, presented by the Manhattan Association of Cabarets, she also received a special citation for her musical contributions from NARAS (presenter of the Grammy Awards).
Spider Saloff has 7 CDs released nationally on Kopaesthetics Records: 1938, Sextet, The Memory of All That, Cool Yule and A New Set of Standards, Like Glass.. Her Christmas CD entitled Cool Yule was a finalist for the Indie Awards. Her newest recording, Cole Porter Live at Maxim's was released summer of 2008. Television and radio credits include: The Bonnie Hunt Show (CBS), The Steve Baskerville Show (CBS), Centerstage (PBS), Artbeat (PBS), Words & Music (syndicated series, 57 episodes), a one-hour feature on the Noteworthy Women series (Public Radio), and Studs Terkel (WFMT).