Al Jarreau, Janis Siegel, Gretchen Parlato, WBGO’s Gary Walker
and Larry Rosen to Choose Winner of the SASSY Award

Newark, NJ – (October 8, 2013) In 1942, a teenage Sarah Vaughan won the Apollo Theater’s amateur singing competition in a performance that was a launching pad for a career that transformed one of America’s original art forms and elevated the craft of jazz vocal music. Last year, Cyrille Aimee focused the world on vocal jazz in Newark again as the first-ever winner of the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, part of the TD James Moody Democracy of Jazz Festival.  For the second installment of the awards, a distinguished panel of musicians, music industry executives, NJPAC leadership and online voters culled through hundreds of submissions from the around the globe, including United States, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, Luxembourg, Belgium, Hungary and Canada, to choose five finalists and a “Rising Star” for the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, the largest competition of its kind in the world.